T_269
The work as shown. Every value below comes from vae.db, the master database of the Crucible Year.
Recorded
- Date
- 2026.04.26, day 119
- Size
- 97 × 180 cm
- Paper
- S4, Tanxi half-raw, 6-foot
- Inks
- MB4, MB5, MB6
- Phase
- P2 The Switch
- Shown on the site
- yes (V23 rating of 5.0 or higher)
- Early storage triage
- SA: save, archive (Peter's early system, since retired)
Measured · V23 (v23.8)
- V23 rating
- 5
- Form
- 2
- Tonal depth
- 2
- Layering
- 2
- Composition
- 2
- Material and surface
- 1
- Ink cover
- 79%
- Dark share
- 51%
- Tonal steps
- 4
- Flaws named by the reads
- other 10, ring 4, water stain 1, tide line 1
Older engine
- V7
- 8
How the number was made
Read by the Visual Analysis Engine, version 23.8, on 2026.10.06: measured by code, then read 5 times by Claude Opus 5.5 against three reference paintings (R1 to R3), each read independent of the others. How the engine works.
Three views of one sheet.
Left, the photograph. Centre, the tone stretch the model is shown beside it: the darkest 45% of tones spread over the whole range, so flat black, banding and stains show. Right, every pixel as the measuring code classes it: cyan black ink, deep teal translucent grey, stone the palest ink, near black bare paper.
4 families of tone.
Every inked pixel's brightness in 64 bins, smoothed; each circled peak holds at least 4% of the ink. Life inside the black: 0.057 (under 0.045 reads as flat).
Five reads, one answer.
Each quality placed on its ladder by each read, and the mean the engine keeps.
READ 1, IN ITS OWN WORDS
“Energetic diagonal mass meeting a broad right arc with central splash burst. Some layering and modelling, but bulky left slab, flat black core and crease damage through dark interiors keep it ordinary.”
Two large diagonal masses meet at centre; right arc follows brush travel well, left slab is bulky with ragged lower lobe near bottom centre.
WEAKEST bulky left diagonal slab, broad and somewhat filled-in
STRONGEST right sweeping curved arc with clean outer wall
Four tonal steps; left mass shows layered grey bands and crease grain; right arc's deep black interior near bottom right is largely uniform.
WEAKEST darkest lower core of right arc fairly flat
STRONGEST left slab's stepped greys and grain
Pale wash arcs top right, mid-grey arc above right mass, dark passes left; overlaps readable but dark masses largely cover earlier passes.
WEAKEST central join where passes merge darkly
STRONGEST pale grey arc pass over upper right arc
Strong diagonal-to-arc movement with splash burst at centre; empty paper upper right shaped by pale arc; lower half crowded and heavy.
WEAKEST heavy bottom-centre convergence crowding lower edge
STRONGEST diagonal thrust meeting the sweeping right arc
Visible paper creases/cracking through left and centre dark masses; small white voids lower centre-left; pale grey blots and drip rings lower left paper.
WEAKEST crease lines and bleached spots inside left dark mass
STRONGEST splatter and dry spray around central burst
4 distinct places, 2 major.
Each read must name every flaw and where it is, in a ninth of the sheet. Here the reads named flaws in 4 distinct places, 16 mentions in all across 5 reads; the number in each ninth is how many times a flaw was named there. Reads agreeing on a place strengthen the evidence for one flaw; they do not multiply it. A major flaw holds Material and surface at rung 1.
Measured from the 16-bit master.
The previous engine (V22) measured this sheet's master file: 1 principal ink mass traced (cyan), 6 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 14 edge segments, 29% crisp, 21% soft or bloomed, 50% broken.
Tonal depth held at rung 1.
4 steps: not appliedMaterial held at rung 1. Mild waves in the unmounted paper are never a flaw.
4 major flaws: appliedThe rating cannot exceed 4.
lowest 1.0A read that breaks the reply format is discarded.
5 of 5 validV23 rating 5.0.
Engine v23.8, 5 reads. Fixed arithmetic, the same for every painting; the constants were set on 24 randomly chosen paintings so the median sheet scores 5. The scale is relative to this archive, not to painting in general, and a difference of less than half a point between two paintings is noise.