T_330
The engine's readingTwo fans of stacked ink arcs, pale grey stepping to black, turn toward each other across a white circle and a lane of bare paper climbing right.
Record- Date
- 2026.06.03
- 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
The circle at the bottom is a well, and the two black fans are the stairways of rival kingdoms spiralling down to it. Every grey step is a reign. The pale ones went first and are mostly weather now. Treaty law says nothing may be thrown into the well. I counted the grey spots on its rim anyway: small coins, small wishes, a grandmother's, a general's. The right-hand kingdom built its last stair too heavy and too black, and it is still settling, a little every night. The road between them is white and climbs to a corner neither kingdom ever claimed. I stand at the top of it with my pockets full. The water is very still.
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
- two concentric arc fans, a left wheel and a right stepped fan, facing
- Movement
- curving sweep round the circle; white channel rising diagonally to upper right
- Coverage
- ink on about four fifths of the paper
- Tone
- eight tonal steps, weighted dark
- Layering
- several translucent passes, pale to black; readable at upper left, closing at lower right
- Edges
- crisp curved walls and square band ends; soft ragged pale edge at top centre
- Feibai
- present in the pale outer band at upper left
- Open paper
- white circle at bottom centre, opening into a diagonal channel to top right
- Chance marks
- grey spatter in the central circle beside the inner arc; creases across darks
- Frame
- ink runs off left, top, lower left and lower right; top right and bottom centre open
Two fans of ink turn toward each other across a white circle. On the left a great wheel of arc bands sweeps from the top edge down off the foot of the sheet. On the right a second fan climbs in stepped blacks toward the upper corner. Between them a lane of bare paper rises from the circle to the open top right. The eye climbs it, then comes back round the wheel.
The upper left is where the sheet is finest. Pale grey bands lie over one another like panes of smoked glass, each pass still legible under the next, stepping down to black at the wheel's core. The half-sized bark paper holds every layer where it lands and keeps the walls clean. Depth comes from order rather than blur, and dry-brush grain along the left bands keeps the greys open.
The cost sits at the bottom right. There the blacks close into one dense, crowded block, and the steps that read so clearly elsewhere sink under it. A scatter of grey spots lands in the white circle beside the inner arc, small but in the one place the eye rests.
These faults are real and they stay small. Two fans and one opening are resolved from edge to edge, the greys are laid with a patience the paper rewards, and the white is shaped as firmly as the ink. Sheets this whole are seldom made.
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.
8 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: 0.056 (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
“This is a close relative of R3: fluent concentric arcs with ordered translucent layers and good tonal range. It falls short of R3 because the lower right is heavy and crowded, and spots spoil the white centre.”
Concentric arc bands on both halves follow the curve of the stroke with clean holding walls; the lower-right band ends are squarer and heavier but still travel.
WEAKEST Blocky stepped ends of the lower-right dark bands
STRONGEST Left sweeping arc bands following the brush's curve
Eight tonal steps; interior modulation 0.056 shows grain and creases inside the darks; graded greys from pale outer arcs to black inner bands on both sides.
WEAKEST Lower-right dark mass, near-black and dense
STRONGEST Left upper arcs stepping from pale grey to black
Several translucent passes overlap in readable order, pale outer arcs under darker inner ones; sequence legible across both halves, though the darkest right passes largely cover what lies beneath.
WEAKEST Lower-right overlaps where black covers earlier greys
STRONGEST Translucent stacked arcs at upper left
Two facing arc systems circle a shaped central void with clear rotational movement; the bottom right is dense and heavy, weighing the sheet down compared with R3's balance.
WEAKEST Heavy, crowded dark mass at bottom right
STRONGEST Central white circle opening between the two arcs
Scattered grey spots and drips sit in the central white opening right against the inner left arc, visible in the colour view; a ring-like mark sits inside the right dark mass.
WEAKEST Grey spot spatter in central white beside inner arc
STRONGEST Grainy dry edges on upper left arcs
3 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 3 distinct places, 13 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), 2 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 19 edge segments, 32% crisp, 63% 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
2026.06.03, day 157 of the Crucible Year, one of 12 paintings from that date. 18 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_330 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)
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