T_255
The engine's readingA black arc swings in from the left and dips to meet a climbing grey wedge, the two together cupping a field of open paper beneath a scattered grey splash.
Record- Date
- 2026.04.21
- Dimensions
- 70 × 180 cm
- Paper
- Tanxi Thickened Grade A Special Jing Pi Small 6-Foot (raw)
- Ink
- Yi De Ge Refined Ink Juice, Boku-Undo Genso, Yi De Ge Yun Tou Yan
Three dark squares sat up in the grey slope, and I read them the way I read a block at night: whose lights are off, who is still awake. The slope turned into a roof. I have stood on roofs like that, tar still warm, the street below muttering to itself. The architects drew no hatch up there. Somebody cut one anyway, for air, then a second, then a third because the first two looked lonely. Down the hill a black curve of overpass carried the last bus out of sight. Up on the slope the three small holes went on breathing into the cold, square and stubborn, letting the whole building's heat leak upward into the orange sky.
The reading
Written by the engine after the painting was rated, from the settled findings, and checked by hand before approval. It explains the numbers; it may not change them.
- Structure
- black arc lower left, grey wedge right, meeting at bottom centre in a bowl
- Movement
- left to right along the bowl; upper splash flares up and outward against it
- Coverage
- ink on about three quarters of the paper
- Tone
- three tonal steps, weighted dark
- Layering
- pale splash, grey wedge, black arc; readable where splash runs beneath arc
- Edges
- dry and bristled on the arc's upper edge; soft, bled lobes on the splash
- Feibai
- present along the upper edge of the black arc, at its left end
- Open paper
- shaped bowl of white across the top centre, held by arc and wedge
- Chance marks
- dark blots high in the wedge; bubble ring in splash; round drops across top
- Frame
- runs off left, bottom and right; top centre stays open
Two big shapes make a bowl across the long sheet. A black arc swings in from the left edge and dips to the bottom centre, and a grey wedge climbs from there toward the upper right. Between them the open paper at top centre is held as a shape, and the eye rides the curve from left to right.
The arc is the best of it. Along its upper edge the brush ran fast and dry, and on raw paper that grips quickly the hairs left parallel streaks of bare white, so the stroke keeps its speed. At its inner margin the pale grey splash still shows through, an earlier pass the black has not wholly sealed.
The wedge holds the sheet's best grey, grain and darker streaks stepping through the wash. As a form it is a slab with a blunt tip, and the dark blots near its top read as accidents from across the room. Inside the arc the black is even, a fill once the bristle lines give out. Where the two meet, they butt rather than join, and the bottom band packs tight.
The bowl works and one stroke earns it. The rest does its job and stops there: a fair, readable sheet that never finds the passage that would lift it.
How it was read
Read by the Visual Analysis Engine, version 23.8, on 2026.10.06: measured by code, then read 3 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: 0.051 (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 sweeping black arc and a broad grey wedge make a workable bowl. The wedge is slab-like, the black arc is fairly flat inside, and the blots inside the wedge count against the surface. An ordinary sheet, close to R2.”
Lower-left black arc follows the brush's travel with a dry-brush edge. The right wedge is a broad, stiff slab, and the top-left splash breaks into lobes.
WEAKEST Right grey wedge: bulky slab with blunt tip
STRONGEST Black sweeping arc with dry-brush striations, lower left
The right wedge shows grain, streaks and stepped density. The black arc is mostly uniform inside. Modulation of 0.051 is only just above flat; three tonal steps.
WEAKEST Black arc interior is largely flat
STRONGEST Right wedge with grain and graded grey
A pale grey splash sits under the black arc, and the arc meets the grey wedge at the bottom centre. Both overlaps stay readable. About three passes.
WEAKEST Top-left splash sits as a separate grey pass
STRONGEST Black arc overlapping grey wedge at bottom centre
The arc and the wedge make a bowl that cradles a shaped field of paper at top centre. The upper-left splash and the scattered drops feel crowded and loose.
WEAKEST Busy splash area upper left
STRONGEST Arc and wedge forming a bowl around the top paper
Three or four dark square blots sit inside the right wedge and show at viewing distance. There is a small bubble ring at the centre and scattered stray drops across the top.
WEAKEST Dark blots inside the right wedge
STRONGEST Dry-brush edge of the black arc
6 distinct places, 3 major.
Each read must name every flaw and where it is, in a ninth of the sheet. Here the reads named flaws in 6 distinct places, 12 mentions in all across 3 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), 5 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 17 edge segments, 24% crisp, 65% soft or bloomed, 12% broken.
The rating these readings produce, the rules applied and the arithmetic, with Peter's own rating where he gave one, are in the Archive record.
Date
2026.04.21, day 114 of the Crucible Year, one of 14 paintings from that date (10 shown). 63 works were registered in the fourteen days before. Paintings are dated by the day their batch was registered and photographed; each was finished that day or within the few days before. Phase: P2 The Switch (working title).
T_255 among all 402
Every painting of the year by date; this one is outlined.
Materials
- Paper
- Tanxi Thickened Grade A Special Jing Pi Small 6-Foot (raw), Anhui Jingxian Tanxi Xuan Paper Art Products Co., Ltd., made 2015.11.19
- Ink MB4
- Yi De Ge Refined Ink Juice, Yi De Ge (Beijing)
- Ink MB5
- Boku-Undo Genso, Boku-Undo
- Ink MB6
- Yi De Ge Yun Tou Yan, Yi De Ge (Beijing)
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