T_294
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
- 5.8
- Form
- 2
- Tonal depth
- 2
- Layering
- 2
- Composition
- 2
- Material and surface
- 2
- Ink cover
- 77%
- Dark share
- 47%
- Tonal steps
- 3
- Flaws named by the reads
- other 10
Older engine
- V7
- 9
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.
3 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: 0.047 (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
“A single sweeping arc with a dark fan over a grey band. The structure is legible, but the dark mass is near-flat and slab-like, with fewer passes than R3. An ordinary sheet overall.”
Arc forms hold and follow the curve; the central dark fan is bulky and filled in, with a squared-off left end rather than a stroke-led edge.
WEAKEST dark fan reads as a filled slab
STRONGEST outer grey arc following brush sweep
Interior modulation 0.047 is just above flat; the dark fan shows only slight variation and creases. Grey outer arc and lower-right dry-brush give banding.
WEAKEST dark fan interior nearly uniform
STRONGEST outer grey band with streaked brush grain
Three passes are readable: pale inner arc, grey outer band, dark fan. Overlaps stay legible but don't build a sequence the way R3 does.
WEAKEST dark fan covers rather than layers
STRONGEST grey outer arc under dark fan edge
The big arc carries the eye from left to bottom right, and the empty paper inside the arc is shaped. The left splatter zone and top-left corner are weak.
WEAKEST left splatter end feels busy and cut
STRONGEST sweeping arc enclosing shaped paper at bottom
The ink is controlled, with dry-brush at lower right. Paper creases cross the dark fan and there is a small blot in the centre void; neither seriously disrupts the main mass.
WEAKEST crease network across dark mass
STRONGEST dry-brush breakup at lower right
2 distinct places, 0 major.
Each read must name every flaw and where it is, in a ninth of the sheet. Here the reads named flaws in 2 distinct places, 10 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.
Measured from the 16-bit master.
The previous engine (V22) measured this sheet's master file: 1 principal ink mass traced (cyan), 7 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 15 edge segments, 33% crisp, 40% soft or bloomed, 27% broken.
Tonal depth held at rung 1.
3 steps: not appliedMaterial held at rung 1. Mild waves in the unmounted paper are never a flaw.
none namedThe rating cannot exceed 4.
lowest 2.0A read that breaks the reply format is discarded.
5 of 5 validV23 rating 5.8.
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.