T_277
The work as shown. Every value below comes from vae.db, the master database of the Crucible Year.
Recorded
- Date
- 2026.05.07, day 130
- Size
- 97 × 180 cm
- Paper
- S12, Red Star Mo She Special Effect Xieyi, half-raw
- 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
- 2.2
- Tonal depth
- 2.2
- Layering
- 2
- Composition
- 2.2
- Material and surface
- 1
- Ink cover
- 79%
- Dark share
- 59%
- Tonal steps
- 4
- Flaws named by the reads
- bloom 5, other 6, ring 5, water stain 3, tide line 1
Older engine
- V7
- 6
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: 0.059 (under 0.045 reads as flat).
Five reads, agreeing on 2 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
“A bold concentric arch with shaped central void and readable stepped greys. The dark band is bulky and cloudy, and blooms at the top-right edge are a visible accident. Overall ordinary, near R2.”
The concentric arch reads clearly and its bands follow the curve. The dark main band is bulky, its top-right outer edge dissolves, and the stepped inner ends look cut off and stiff.
WEAKEST Ragged, blotchy outer edge of the arch at top right
STRONGEST Stepped inner grey bands that follow the arc's travel
Interior modulation is 0.059 with four tonal steps. The inner greys are banded and graded, but the large upper-left dark reads as cloudy mottling rather than modelled depth.
WEAKEST Cloudy, mottled interior of the upper-left dark band
STRONGEST Graded grey bands stepping inward at lower left
Two or three passes can be read: pale inner bands, a mid grey, then the black. The black largely covers what is underneath instead of building depth through it.
WEAKEST Dark main band covers earlier passes beneath it
STRONGEST Translucent inner bands overlapping at the centre-right steps
The single arch has strong curved movement and shapes the central void. Coverage is heavy at 79%, the bottom-right paper is leftover, and the top-right edge is weak.
WEAKEST Leftover bottom-right corner and messy top-right edge
STRONGEST Semicircular void of empty paper shaped by the arch
Blotchy blooms and runs sit against the main mass at top right and are visible in colour. There are stray spots in the mid band and faint rings near the bottom centre.
WEAKEST Watery blooms and drips along the top-right outer edge
STRONGEST Dry-brush terminations of the black band at right
7 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 7 distinct places, 20 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), 3 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 15 edge segments, 87% crisp, 7% soft or bloomed, 7% 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 5.5.
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.