T_271
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
- 5.7
- Form
- 2
- Tonal depth
- 2
- Layering
- 2
- Composition
- 2
- Material and surface
- 1.8
- Ink cover
- 83%
- Dark share
- 48%
- Tonal steps
- 4
- Flaws named by the reads
- other 10, water stain 5, bloom 1, ring 1
Older engine
- V7
- 5
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: 0.051 (under 0.045 reads as flat).
Five reads, agreeing on 4 of 5 qualities.
Each quality placed on its ladder by each read, and the mean the engine keeps. Where reads differ, they differ by one rung; close calls resolve down.
READ 1, IN ITS OWN WORDS
“Two bold curved bands set up a circular movement over grey washes; forms coherent but blunt-ended, modest interior modelling, and visible creasing plus cloudy washes mar the surface. An ordinary sheet near R2.”
Two large curved bands hold their walls and follow an arc; ends are squared and slab-like, with bulk especially in the left band's cut-off end.
WEAKEST Blunt squared ends of left upper band
STRONGEST Right curved band following brush arc
Tone-stretched view shows brush streaks and banding inside right band; left band shows a soft band but is largely even. Modulation 0.051 just above flat.
WEAKEST Left band interior fairly even mid-dark
STRONGEST Right band with streaked dry-brush grain
Grey washes and a pale arc sit under the two dark bands; overlaps readable at band edges, about two to three passes.
WEAKEST Lower-centre grey wash cloudy beneath right band
STRONGEST Translucent grey arcs under dark bands
Opposed curved bands set up a circular diagonal movement with shaped white centre; right edge spatter and lower-left drips feel busy and scattered.
WEAKEST Crowded spatter field at right edge
STRONGEST Two opposed arcs implying a circle
Crease and crack lines visible in colour view across both dark bands; cloudy blotchy grey wash and water spots at lower centre and upper right.
WEAKEST Crackle creases through right dark band
STRONGEST Dry-brush streaks within right band
7 distinct places, 1 major.
Each read must name every flaw and where it is, in a ninth of the sheet. Here the reads named flaws in 7 distinct places, 17 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), 8 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 17 edge segments, 47% crisp, 29% soft or bloomed, 24% 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.
1 major flaw: appliedThe rating cannot exceed 4.
lowest 1.8A read that breaks the reply format is discarded.
5 of 5 validV23 rating 5.7.
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.