T_308
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
- 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
- 68%
- Dark share
- 27%
- Tonal steps
- 5
- Flaws named by the reads
- bloom 6, other 1, ring 3
Older engine
- V7
- 8
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.
5 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
“An ordinary gestural sheet close to R2. The sweeping dry-brush arc gives flow and modelled greys, but the left dark mass and the right blob are bulky and fairly flat. One soft bleed sits near the top right.”
The central swinging arc is fluent, with its outline following the stroke. The left dark mass is bulky and lobed, and the right-centre blob is a lump.
WEAKEST Right-centre round dark blob, lumpy and unshaped
STRONGEST Central grey arc following the brush's sweep
The arc has streaked, stepped greys and the left mass shows some density shifts. The right blob and the top-right dark are fairly flat. Modulation 0.047 is barely above flat.
WEAKEST Right-centre dark blob, flat inside
STRONGEST Dry-brush graded greys in the central arc
Two or three passes: the grey arc goes down first, then the dark masses and spatter. The overlaps on the right stay legible, but the left dark mostly hides what lies beneath it.
WEAKEST Left dark mass covers the earlier grey
STRONGEST Dark marks laid over the grey arc on the right
A U-shaped sweep carries the eye from left to right, and the paper above the arc is shaped. The left mass is congested and the right cluster is scattered.
WEAKEST Crowded, heavy left mass
STRONGEST Arc spanning the sheet, linking the left and right masses
The ink is controlled and the dry-brush streaks are well used. There is a soft bleed halo at the top of the right arc, and pale cloudy spatter at the far left.
WEAKEST Diffuse halo at the dark spot, top centre-right
STRONGEST Dry-brush texture in the arc
5 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 5 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: 3 principal ink masses traced (cyan), 12 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 21 edge segments, 19% crisp, 48% soft or bloomed, 33% broken.
Tonal depth held at rung 1.
5 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.