T_376
The work as shown. Every value below comes from vae.db, the master database of the Crucible Year.
Recorded
- Date
- 2026.09.12, day 258
- Size
- 90 × 100 cm
- Paper
- S14, Half-Cooked Red Star Mo She 6-Foot Bark Xuan Paper
- Inks
- MB6, MB7, MB8, MC
- Phase
- P4 S14
- Shown on the site
- yes (V23 rating of 5.0 or higher)
- Early storage triage
- SHP: save, has potential (Peter's early system, since retired)
Measured · V23 (v23.8)
- V23 rating
- 5
- Form
- 2
- Tonal depth
- 1
- Layering
- 2
- Composition
- 2
- Material and surface
- 2
- Ink cover
- 91%
- Dark share
- 80%
- Tonal steps
- 2
- Flaws named by the reads
- water stain 5, other 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.
2 families of tone.
Every inked pixel's brightness in 64 bins, smoothed; each circled peak holds at least 4% of the ink. Two or fewer: Tonal depth is held at the bottom rung whatever the model reads. A dense sheet of many translucent passes can count low here, so Layering is left to the reads. Life inside the black: 0.051 (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 spiral of broad arc bands with a red under-layer, in the same family as R3 but heavier and denser. The lower dark slab is flat and bulky, and the bands crowd the frame. It is a sound, ordinary sheet.”
Concentric arc bands read as coherent spiral forms with holding walls; the lower-left dark block is a heavy rectangular slab with stiff, squared top edge.
WEAKEST Bulky slab-like dark block at lower left
STRONGEST Upper sweeping arc band following brush travel
Tone-stretched view shows grain, creasing and stepped greys in upper arcs; the lower dark sweep is heavy and close to flat; only two tonal plateaus measured.
WEAKEST Lower dark mass, near-uniform dense black
STRONGEST Upper right arcs showing graded translucent grey bands
Several arc passes overlap legibly on the right and around the inner opening; red under-layer shows top-left; the lower dark pass largely buries what lies beneath.
WEAKEST Dense black lower sweep covering earlier passes
STRONGEST Overlapping arc segments on right edge stay legible
Spiral carries the eye clockwise around a shaped white core; but the bands crowd every edge and the left margin leftovers feel unresolved.
WEAKEST Crowded edges; ink fills about 90% of sheet
STRONGEST Spiral movement round the shaped pale inner opening
Ink controlled; crumpled-paper crease texture throughout; faint mottled pale patches in the lower-left black visible mainly in tone-stretched view; small specks at right edge.
WEAKEST Cloudy pale blotches inside lower-left dark mass
STRONGEST Dry-brush streaked edges of arc bands at right
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, 11 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: 2 principal ink masses traced (cyan), 3 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 17 edge segments, 65% crisp, 35% soft or bloomed, 0% broken.
Tonal depth held at rung 1.
2 steps: 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 validCaps the code applied: {"run_id":"T_376","cap_no":1,"read_no":1,"cap_text":"sample 1: T 2->1: tonal_steps=2 (<=2)"}; {"run_id":"T_376","cap_no":2,"read_no":2,"cap_text":"sample 2: T 2->1: tonal_steps=2 (<=2)"}; {"run_id":"T_376","cap_no":3,"read_no":3,"cap_text":"sample 3: T 2->1: tonal_steps=2 (<=2)"}; {"run_id":"T_376","cap_no":4,"read_no":4,"cap_text":"sample 4: T 2->1: tonal_steps=2 (<=2)"}; {"run_id":"T_376","cap_no":5,"read_no":5,"cap_text":"sample 5: T 2->1: tonal_steps=2 (<=2)"}.
V23 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.