T_277
The engine's readingA black arch rolls clockwise over stepped grey bands and a pale dome of bare paper, ending at lower right in a row of square bristle tips.
Record- Date
- 2026.05.07
- Dimensions
- 97 × 180 cm
- Paper
- Red Star Mo She Special Effect Xieyi Edition, half-raw (June 2025 batch)
- Ink
- Yi De Ge Refined Ink Juice, Boku-Undo Genso, Yi De Ge Yun Tou Yan
When I was small I made rooms out of blankets. You pull the thing over your head and the world goes dark and heavy at the top, the light comes in grey from the sides, and in the middle there is a pale little dome where your breath collects. Somebody's hand has to hold the edge down or the cold gets in. On this one I can see the fingers, black, gripping at the lower right. They were never very good at it. A little damp always crept in at the top corner. I lay under there anyway, warm, listening for my name, a torch going yellow in my hand.
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
- concentric arch, black outer band over stepped grey inner bands
- Movement
- clockwise sweep from lower left, over the top, down to lower right
- Coverage
- ink on about four fifths of the paper
- Tone
- four tonal steps, weighted dark
- Layering
- three kinds of pass, readable at right and centre
- Edges
- crisp bristle tips lower right, square steps centre, soft blooming rim top right
- Feibai
- present, in the square bristle tips ending the black band at lower right
- Open paper
- pale dome at bottom centre, with an open margin down the right side
- Chance marks
- blooms and drips at top right, faint rings bottom centre, spots near centre step
- Frame
- ink runs off the left, top and lower left edges; right edge stays open
An arch fills the paper. A black band climbs out of the lower left, rolls over the top and falls on the right, while grey bands step down inside it towards a pale dome of bare paper. The sweep runs clockwise and never wavers.
The right-hand descent is the finest passage. The black opens into grain and streak as it travels, then breaks into square bristle tips where the hairs part into flying white. Half-raw bark paper grips a dry brush, so those ends stay sharp instead of feathering, and the grey steps beside them keep clean walls.
The upper left is heavier and duller. The black sits so thick there that it seals over the passes beneath and dries to a cloudy, nearly flat field, jammed against the top edge. The inner greys stop in a square notch at centre that looks cut off. Blooms leak from the outer rim at top right, and the sheet absorbs them.
A sound arch, then, lifted by one fine descent. The right side has an exactness the top never finds, and the weight crowding the edge keeps the whole a step below its best moment.
How it was read
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: 0.059 (under 0.045 reads as flat).
Five reads, agreeing on 2 of 5 qualities.
Each quality placed on its ladder by each read, and the mean the engine keeps. Where reads differ, they differ by one rung; close calls resolve down.
READ 1, IN ITS OWN WORDS
“A bold concentric arch with shaped central void and readable stepped greys. The dark band is bulky and cloudy, and blooms at the top-right edge are a visible accident. Overall ordinary, near R2.”
The concentric arch reads clearly and its bands follow the curve. The dark main band is bulky, its top-right outer edge dissolves, and the stepped inner ends look cut off and stiff.
WEAKEST Ragged, blotchy outer edge of the arch at top right
STRONGEST Stepped inner grey bands that follow the arc's travel
Interior modulation is 0.059 with four tonal steps. The inner greys are banded and graded, but the large upper-left dark reads as cloudy mottling rather than modelled depth.
WEAKEST Cloudy, mottled interior of the upper-left dark band
STRONGEST Graded grey bands stepping inward at lower left
Two or three passes can be read: pale inner bands, a mid grey, then the black. The black largely covers what is underneath instead of building depth through it.
WEAKEST Dark main band covers earlier passes beneath it
STRONGEST Translucent inner bands overlapping at the centre-right steps
The single arch has strong curved movement and shapes the central void. Coverage is heavy at 79%, the bottom-right paper is leftover, and the top-right edge is weak.
WEAKEST Leftover bottom-right corner and messy top-right edge
STRONGEST Semicircular void of empty paper shaped by the arch
Blotchy blooms and runs sit against the main mass at top right and are visible in colour. There are stray spots in the mid band and faint rings near the bottom centre.
WEAKEST Watery blooms and drips along the top-right outer edge
STRONGEST Dry-brush terminations of the black band at right
7 distinct places, 2 major.
Each read must name every flaw and where it is, in a ninth of the sheet. Here the reads named flaws in 7 distinct places, 20 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), 3 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 15 edge segments, 87% crisp, 7% soft or bloomed, 7% 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
2026.05.07, day 130 of the Crucible Year, one of 19 paintings from that date (14 shown). 16 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_277 among all 402
Every painting of the year by date; this one is outlined.
Materials
- Paper
- Red Star Mo She Special Effect Xieyi Edition, half-raw (June 2025 batch), China Xuan Paper Co., Ltd., made 2025.06.07
- 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)
Related
