T_304
The work as shown. Every value below comes from vae.db, the master database of the Crucible Year.
Recorded
- Date
- 2026.05.14, day 137
- Size
- 70 × 180 cm
- Paper
- S3, Tanxi Jing Pi, raw
- Inks
- MB4, MB5, MB6, MC
- 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
- 80%
- Dark share
- 41%
- Tonal steps
- 4
- Flaws named by the reads
- water stain 4, bloom 7, other 7, ring 1
Older engine
- V7
- 3
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: 0.052 (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 paired arcs with pink underlayer and a strongly textured right dark mass, but the crowded centre and its cloudy, mottled grey wash weaken the material and tonal quality; an ordinary sheet near R2.”
Arcing strokes left and right follow brush travel with bristle-streaked edges; the large central grey mass is broad, soft-walled and somewhat formless at its upper edge.
WEAKEST Central grey mass bulky, outline dissolving at top
STRONGEST Left arc sweep ending in dark hooked foot
Dark modulation 0.052 and four tonal steps; right mass shows veining and arcs, left arc has dry-brush grain, but central mass reads as one cloudy grey.
WEAKEST Central grey mass mottled but tonally cloudy
STRONGEST Right dark mass with reticulated white veining
Grey sweeps, pink colour band and later black strokes read as distinct passes; in the centre-right the grey and black passes merge somewhat and the order softens.
WEAKEST Centre overlaps where grey and black passes blur
STRONGEST Pink band under black arc, upper left
Paired arcs give a clear left-to-right sweep; the white gap between them is shaped, but 80% coverage crowds the right half and the centre mass feels heavy.
WEAKEST Crowded centre-right; little shaped empty paper
STRONGEST Two arcs driving left-to-right rhythm
Dry-brush and reticulation used well at right, but the central mass is a cloudy mottled wash, with grey blot rings top left and stray drops on the mass.
WEAKEST Cloudy mottled wash inside central grey mass
STRONGEST Dry-brush grain on left arc foot
4 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 4 distinct places, 19 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 16 edge segments, 6% crisp, 69% soft or bloomed, 25% 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.
5 major flaws: appliedThe rating cannot exceed 4.
lowest 1.0A read that breaks the reply format is discarded.
5 of 5 validV23 rating 5.0.
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.