T_339
The engine's readingA fan of ink arcs, pale grey outside and black within, wheels from the left edge round a half-moon of bare paper and off the bottom 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 white half-circle at the bottom is where I put my hand. Bands of grey stand round it in order, oldest on the outside, youngest and blackest nearest the middle, the way shells of gas hang round a star that has said most of what it had to say. Out at the palest edge the light left a very long time ago. It is still arriving. I stood at the rim and the black did not move, which is the correct speed for something that size. The cold out there is complete and does not apologise for itself. At the far right the last band thins into streaks, a tail of dust leaving past the edge of the paper, into the dark.
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 arc bands in one fan, turning around a shared centre at lower middle
- Movement
- one sweep from left edge, over the top, down off the bottom right; nothing against it
- Coverage
- ink on about four fifths of the paper
- Tone
- four tonal steps, weighted dark
- Layering
- pale grey, mid grey and black passes; order readable across the top and right
- Edges
- crisp squared ends on the blocks; soft dry-brush fades at the right ends
- Feibai
- present at the dry right ends of the arcs, lower right
- Open paper
- half-circle of bare paper at lower centre; open sky at top left
- Chance marks
- small pale tide-edged blots in grey wash near left edge; crinkle lines across the darks
- Frame
- ink runs off left, right and bottom edges; top and lower-left corner stay open
A great fan of ink swings in from the left edge, climbs over the top and drops off the bottom right, wheeling round a half-moon of bare paper at lower centre. The eye takes it in one breath, and the empty half-circle pulls as hard as the black.
The right side shows how it was built. Pale grey bands went down first, mid greys over them, black last. On this half-sized bark paper each pass kept its own edge and did not sink into the one beneath, so the order reads band by band, outward from black to the faintest wash. Where the arcs end at the right, the brush ran fast and dry and the hairs parted into flying white.
The costs are real and small. The black block at top centre sits square and even, more slab than stroke. Grey stubs crowd the start of the turn at upper left, and weight piles into the cropped lower right. Two pale blots mark the left wash; paper wrinkles crackle across the darks, and the sheet absorbs them.
The turn holds from its first pale band to its last dark one. Sheets this whole are seldom made, and this one stands among the finest the archive holds.
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: 0.056 (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
“Fan of layered arc segments close to R3's idiom: ordered translucent passes, graded greys, shaped void. Lowest black arc somewhat bulky, right side crowded, minor blots at left keep material at sound.”
Arc segments follow brush travel around a common centre; walls hold with dry-brush ends. Lowest black arc is bulky but still curved and made.
WEAKEST heavy lowest black arc, slightly slab-like at left end
STRONGEST upper black trapezoid segment with clean dragged walls
Modulation 0.056, four tonal steps; tone-stretched view shows arcs, grain and crackle inside black masses, and a stepped range of greys outward to paper.
WEAKEST darkest lower arc near-uniform at left end
STRONGEST right-side grey segments graded with brush banding
Pale grey fan segments laid first, mid greys then black over them; overlaps read clearly across top and right, building depth in sequence.
WEAKEST black arcs partly cover earlier grey passes
STRONGEST translucent pale segments overlapping at upper left
One sweeping arc carries eye from left to bottom right; the inner white void and upper-left paper are shaped. Weight crowds right edge somewhat.
WEAKEST bottom-right crop feels heavy and cut
STRONGEST sweeping fan arc around the open lower-centre void
Ink controlled with dry-brush edges; small blot/ring marks in pale grey at left edge; crinkle network across darks reads as paper texture, not major.
WEAKEST small pale blots in left grey wash
STRONGEST dry-brush grain at segment ends, upper centre
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, 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), 2 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 16 edge segments, 38% crisp, 31% soft or bloomed, 31% 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_339 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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