T_310
The engine's readingA black fan of curved bands and a spattered grey crescent bend toward each other across a bowl of bare paper, with two violet drops at its rim.
Record- Date
- 2026.05.24
- Dimensions
- 97 × 180 cm
- Paper
- Red Star Mo She Imitation Antique Chu Bark, Exhibition Edition, half-raw
- Ink
- Yi De Ge Refined Ink Juice, Boku-Undo Genso, Yi De Ge Yun Tou Yan, colour inks
Violet drops on the lip of the white, and the kitchen smells of blackberries. The left side of the room is the stirrer: sleeves up, spoon going, jam spitting out of the pan in every direction and a pink freckle of it climbing the wall. The right side is the one with the jars, dark and orderly, rows of them hot from the oven and lined up to be filled. Between them the steam stands in a pale bowl and fogs the window. Heaney wrote about the berries he hoarded as a boy, and how they soured in the byre. These ones will be lidded by dark and given away by Sunday. By morning the drops on the floor have dried into small bruises the mop will never quite lift.
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
- left crescent and right fan, joined by a low grey channel along the bottom
- Movement
- down the left crescent, across the bottom, up the right fan; spatter cuts diagonally upper left
- Coverage
- ink on about four fifths of the paper
- Tone
- three tonal steps, weighted dark
- Layering
- grey washes, black strokes, colour passes; readable in right fan, blurred lower left
- Edges
- crisp on the fan's curved walls, soft in left greys, broken in lower-left dabs
- Feibai
- present in the right fan's banded strokes and the upper left sweep
- Open paper
- a bowl-shaped hollow at centre between the two curves, opening to the top
- Colour
- two violet drops at centre; red streaks upper centre right; rose-brown wash lower left
- Chance marks
- spatter upper left; ring drop and pale drip blots below the right fan
- Frame
- ink runs off left, top right, right and bottom left edges; top centre stays open
Two great curves bend toward each other across a bowl of bare paper. The left falls as a spattered crescent of grey and black, and a low grey channel along the bottom lifts it into the right: a fan of black bands climbing off the top corner. Two violet drops mark the rim of the hollow between them.
The fan is the sure thing. Each band follows the travel of a wide brush. The half-raw bark paper holds each pass where it landed, so the translucent greys on its outer edge read in order, over and under the black. Where the brush ran light, the hairs split into flying white that keeps the curve to its end.
Inside, the darkest band goes nearly flat. The ink sealed the paper there and the grain is lost. The lower left is crowded: dabs, spatter and a rose-brown wash clot until the layers no longer read in order. A few drip rings sit below the fan's foot.
The flat core and the busy corner are real. They are small beside two opposed forms, an emptiness with a shape, and a fan built pass by pass that holds at full size. This is serious painting, sure of itself in all but one corner.
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.
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: 0.057 (under 0.045 reads as flat).
Five reads, agreeing on 1 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
“This is a strong vortex sheet. The banded right arc has real tonal and layered depth, and the empty centre is shaped. The lower-left blots are less refined, and there are minor drip rings near the right mass.”
Right arc bands follow the stroke cleanly; the left sweeping curves hold, but the lower-left blobs and clotted strokes are bulky and less exact.
WEAKEST Lower-left cluster of blotted ovals and spatter
STRONGEST Right concentric dark arc following brush travel
The right dark mass shows arcs, grain and stepped bands. The left grey sweeps are graded inside. Modulation 0.057, with three tonal plateaus from black to paper.
WEAKEST Darkest band of right arc somewhat even
STRONGEST Right arc's banded concentric greys
Several translucent grey passes stack under the black in both the right arc and the left sweep. You can read their order, and the overlaps build depth.
WEAKEST Lower-left overlaps slightly clotted
STRONGEST Translucent stacked bands of right arc
Two curving masses form a vortex around a shaped empty centre. The bottom connecting stroke carries the eye across, though the lower left is busy.
WEAKEST Crowded lower-left spatter zone
STRONGEST Shaped empty centre between two opposing arcs
The ink is controlled and the colour spatter and blue dots are deliberate. Small ring-like drops and blots sit at the lower right of the big arc; they are minor.
WEAKEST Small ring drops beside right arc
STRONGEST Dry-brush grain along the right arc's edges
4 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 4 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.
Measured from the 16-bit master.
The previous engine (V22) measured this sheet's master file: 1 principal ink mass traced (cyan), 6 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 17 edge segments, 41% crisp, 41% soft or bloomed, 18% 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
2026.05.24, day 147 of the Crucible Year, one of 10 paintings from that date (9 shown). 15 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: P3 The Floor Rises (working title).
T_310 among all 402
Every painting of the year by date; this one is outlined.
Materials
- Paper
- Red Star Mo She Imitation Antique Chu Bark, Exhibition Edition, half-raw, China Xuan Paper Co., Ltd. (中国宣纸股份有限公司), made 2026.01.14
- 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)
- Colour
- colour inks, recorded together
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