T_272
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
- 5.5
- Form
- 2
- Tonal depth
- 2.2
- Layering
- 2
- Composition
- 2.4
- Material and surface
- 1
- Ink cover
- 77%
- Dark share
- 52%
- Tonal steps
- 6
- Flaws named by the reads
- tide line 5, other 5, water stain 5
Older engine
- V7
- 7
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.
6 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: 0.060 (under 0.045 reads as flat).
Five reads, agreeing on 3 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
“The opposing arcs make an engaging circular structure, and the left arc has layered, modulated greys. The heavy right black mass, cluttered top centre and pitted, tide-marked inner grey arc hold the sheet to an ordinary level.”
The two big arcs read as circular brush travel with holding walls. The right black mass is heavy and slab-like inside, and the top-centre grey shapes are ragged.
WEAKEST Bulky, blunt right-hand dark mass interior
STRONGEST Left arc with dry-brush striations following the sweep
Six tonal steps and modulation of 0.060. The left arc shows bands and graded greys. The core of the right dark mass reads mostly as one dense black.
WEAKEST Lower interior of the right black mass
STRONGEST Left arc's stepped greys and striations
Two or three grey passes on the left overlap legibly. On the right, the later black largely covers the earlier grey arc.
WEAKEST Right mass, where passes merge into black
STRONGEST Overlapping translucent grey passes in the left arc
The arcs on left and right set up a circular movement around shaped white paper. The top-centre grey shards and spatter clutter the junction and weaken the flow.
WEAKEST Cluttered top-centre grey fragments
STRONGEST Two opposing arcs enclosing a shaped white centre
The inner grey arc at centre-left carries scattered pitted specks and a pale tide-edged patch, visible in the colour view. Further tide edges sit in the top-centre greys.
WEAKEST Pitted, speckled patch in the centre-left grey arc
STRONGEST Dry-brush striations at the left arc's edge
6 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 6 distinct places, 15 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: 3 principal ink masses traced (cyan), 6 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 21 edge segments, 57% crisp, 14% soft or bloomed, 29% broken.
Tonal depth held at rung 1.
6 steps: not appliedMaterial held at rung 1. Mild waves in the unmounted paper are never a flaw.
5 major flaws: appliedThe rating cannot exceed 4.
lowest 1.0A read that breaks the reply format is discarded.
5 of 5 validV23 rating 5.5.
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.