T_318
The engine's readingA great black arc wheels over a held circle of bare paper, fanned with stepped grey at upper left and crossed by one red stroke.
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
Three red drops below the heavy black end, and I am in a kitchen at two in the morning. Someone has cut a thumb on the good knife, the one we said we would sharpen. The other one comes in barefoot, half asleep, and holds the hand under the tap without asking how it happened. I stand by the fridge and keep quiet. The kettle goes on, because the kettle always goes on. The loaf stays half cut on the board, a pale round face turned up at the ceiling. They lean on the counter, shoulder to shoulder, watching the water run pink and then clear, and the plaster goes on crooked, and neither of them straightens it.
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
- one great arc wrapping an open circle, grey fan bands behind it
- Movement
- rises at lower left, over the top, down off bottom right; red arc descends across it
- Coverage
- ink on about three quarters of the paper
- Tone
- six tonal steps, weighted dark
- Layering
- translucent grey passes, black arc, red pass; readable at upper left and top
- Edges
- crisp on the arc's inner wall and grey steps; ragged at lower-left end
- Feibai
- present in the outer grey bands, upper left and upper right
- Open paper
- round void, lower centre right, cut by bottom edge; top-left corner
- Colour
- red arc at upper right; red drops and pink ring at lower left
- Chance marks
- grey smudges at left edge; tide shape at top centre; cloudy patches inside black
- Frame
- runs off top, right and bottom right; left edge and top-left corner open
One great arc rises from the lower left, rolls across the top and drops off the bottom right, and the eye rides it the whole way. Inside, a round of bare paper is held open and cut by the bottom edge, so the turn never closes.
The finest passage is the grey fan at upper left. Translucent bands step outward, each pass legible through the next, because the half-sized paper keeps their edges crisp and lets layers stack without sinking into one another. Dry-brush streaks run with the sweep, and a red arc at upper right lies cleanly over the grey.
The trouble is where the arc begins. At the lower left it breaks into stacked, slab-like wedges and a ragged black block, and the motion stalls. The black is dense enough to seal the paper: its descending left half reads as flat surface and hides the passes beneath. A hard-edged tide shape at the top centre and cloudy patches in the black at upper right are small.
The sweep and its held circle are fully resolved, and they outweigh a clumsy start. A painting of real force, faulted at 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.
6 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: 0.062 (under 0.045 reads as flat).
Five reads, agreeing on 3 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 large arc sheet in R3's family. It has clear translucent layering and a well-shaped white void, but the bottom-left terminal is blunt and the black mass reads flatter than R3's. Overall it is a solid, ordinary sheet.”
The main arc holds and follows the brush's travel to the bottom right. At the bottom left the arc ends in clumsy, slab-like wedges with awkward joins.
WEAKEST Blunt stacked block terminals at bottom-left of arc
STRONGEST Main black arc sweeping to bottom right
The outer grey bands step and grade well. The tone-stretched view shows mottling and banding inside the dark arc, but at viewing distance its left portion reads as fairly uniform black.
WEAKEST Black arc's left half reads flat in colour
STRONGEST Graded translucent outer bands at upper left
Several translucent grey passes overlap in a readable order on the left and top. The red arc pass sits legibly over the grey at upper right.
WEAKEST Dark arc covers underlying passes rather than reading through
STRONGEST Stepped translucent bands overlapping at upper left
The big arc carries the eye from bottom left over the top and down to the right, and frames a shaped white void. The bottom-left end is jammed, and the top-edge form is cramped.
WEAKEST Crowded broken terminal at bottom left
STRONGEST Empty circular interior framed by the arc
The ink is controlled. Blotchy patches inside the black arc show mainly in the tone-stretched view. Faint grey marks on the left paper are small. The red drops are deliberate colour.
WEAKEST Cloudy mottling inside the dark arc
STRONGEST Dry-brush streaks in the outer grey bands
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, 12 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: 3 principal ink masses traced (cyan), 1 enclosed void at true size in its grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 20 edge segments, 25% crisp, 70% soft or bloomed, 5% 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_318 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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