T_393
The work as shown. Every value below comes from vae.db, the master database of the Crucible Year.
Recorded
- Date
- 2026.10.16, day 292
- Size
- 97 × 180 cm
- Paper
- S14, Half-Cooked Red Star Mo She 6-Foot Bark Xuan Paper, self-sized
- Inks
- MB6, MB8, MB9, MB10, MC
- Phase
- P4 S14
- Shown on the site
- yes (V23 rating of 5.0 or higher)
Measured · V23 (v23.8)
- V23 rating
- 5
- Form
- 2
- Tonal depth
- 1
- Layering
- 2
- Composition
- 2
- Material and surface
- 2
- Ink cover
- 83%
- Dark share
- 75%
- Tonal steps
- 3
- Flaws named by the reads
- other 5, water stain 5
How the number was made
Read by the Visual Analysis Engine, version 23.8, on 2026.10.17: 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: 0.035 (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
“Two fans built like R3's, but heavier and with flat black interiors. The banding shows only at the rims, the sheet is crowded and the surface is sound. The red drops are deliberate colour. An ordinary sheet overall.”
Two quarter-arc fans with walls that hold and edges that follow the sweep, but both bodies are bulky filled slabs rather than travelled strokes.
WEAKEST Right fan's dense, slab-like dark body
STRONGEST Left fan's curved inner notch and arc edge
Measured dark modulation 0.035 is flat. Tone steps only at the fan rims; the large black interiors read as uniform surface in the colour view.
WEAKEST Flat black interior of right fan
STRONGEST Stepped grey bands at outer arc edges
Two or three passes legible as concentric grey bands at the rims and the grey wash at bottom left; inside, later black simply covers the earlier ones.
WEAKEST Dark core covers earlier passes entirely
STRONGEST Translucent outer grey rings around both fans
Paired fans around a central slit and opening make a clear structure, but 83% coverage leaves the empty paper as cramped margins; the arrangement is static.
WEAKEST Crowded, near-symmetric masses filling the sheet
STRONGEST Narrow vertical gap leading into the central white
Ink is controlled, red drops at the bottom are deliberate colour, and the edges are clean; small spatter dots at left and a faintly cloudy wash at bottom left are minor.
WEAKEST Cloudy grey wash at bottom left
STRONGEST Dry-brush grain at right fan's lower edge
3 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 3 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.
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 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.