T_303
The engine's readingA long grey band rolls across raw paper into a black arc rearing at the right, with a pale hook curling back beyond it.
Record- Date
- 2026.05.14
- 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
The black head at the top right is the bow of a container ship easing into the harbour, the only part of it that looks like it means business. Everything behind is grey hull, a wall the length of a street sliding past the end of the pier, so slow you have to watch a lamppost to see it move. The tug at the right has thrown its line and swung away in a grey hook of wake. At the stern the spray is still settling where the propeller churned. Gulls follow the ship in as if it owes them money. Then the engines drop to nothing, and the whole wall of steel settles against the quay with a groan you feel in your teeth.
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
- broad grey band, black arc across its right end, pale hook beyond
- Movement
- left to right and rising; pale hook curls back against it
- Coverage
- ink on about three quarters of the paper
- Tone
- four tonal steps, weighted to the middle greys
- Layering
- three passes; black over grey and pale right arcs readable, left greys merge
- Edges
- crisp at black head; broken in black tail; soft and mottled at wash's left
- Feibai
- present, in the lower tail of the black arc and the pale right arcs
- Open paper
- wedge at top right, strip down right side, band along upper left
- Chance marks
- blooms along wash's left edge; water stains lower left; drips top left
- Frame
- ink runs off top and bottom edges; left and right edges stay largely open
A grey band rolls in from the left, swells along the top of the paper and climbs to the right. There a black arc rears up out of it, and a pale hook curls back on the far side. The movement is clear from across the room: one long push, then one answer.
The black arc is where the sheet comes alive. Its head is dense and sealed, cut clean against the open paper at upper right. Lower down the hairs split, and the stroke breaks into parallel white streaks as it runs off the bottom edge, still curving, still travelling. Raw paper grips a dry brush, so every bristle shows.
The grey band does far less with its size. Most of it is one even middle grey, a slab across the left and centre with little shaped space around it. On the left the wet wash spread fast through the absorbent paper, and its wall dissolves into mottled lobes, with cloudy stains below and drips above.
That leaves an everyday sheet with one live passage. The arc rewards a long look. The grey around it is mostly weight, and the left side keeps the eye waiting for the right.
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: 0.048 (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 confident dark arc and a pale sweep give the sheet direction, but the big grey slab is bulky and mostly flat, and blooms mar its left edge. An ordinary sheet, near R2.”
Dark arcing stroke follows brush travel with split dry-brush bristle edges; large grey wash is a heavy slab with a ragged, undefined left wall.
WEAKEST Bulky grey slab spanning left and centre
STRONGEST Dark curved stroke with dry-brush tail, right-centre
Dark mass shows bristle streaks and grading toward its lower tail (modulation 0.048, barely above flat); big grey wash is mostly even, with some vertical banding at left.
WEAKEST Grey slab interior largely flat mid-grey
STRONGEST Dark stroke's streaked, graded interior
Three passes: a grey wash, a dark stroke over it and a light arc at right. The overlaps can be read but build little depth; four tonal steps.
WEAKEST Dark stroke covers grey without much translucency
STRONGEST Pale grey arc legible over paper, right
A clear left-to-right sweep ending in the dark head and the arc. Ink covers 77% of the sheet, so the empty paper is mostly the top-right and bottom-right corners; the left reads as dense and static.
WEAKEST Heavy grey slab crowds left half
STRONGEST Sweep from dark stroke into right arc
The left edge of the grey slab shows blotchy blooms and cloudy pooling that are visible in the colour view, with scattered drips nearby; the grey wash interior is slightly cloudy.
WEAKEST Mottled, bloomed left edge of grey wash
STRONGEST Dry-brush bristle texture in dark stroke
4 distinct places, 1 major.
Each read must name every flaw and where it is, in a ninth of the sheet. Here the reads named flaws in 4 distinct places, 15 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: 2 principal ink masses traced (cyan), 5 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 18 edge segments, 39% crisp, 50% soft or bloomed, 11% 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
2026.05.14, day 137 of the Crucible Year, one of 9 paintings from that date (6 shown). 28 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_303 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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