T_342
The engine's readingA fan of stepped grey and black ink bands arches across a long sheet toward a small white doorway, with horizontal slabs stacked at the left.
Record- Date
- 2026.06.06
- Dimensions
- 70 × 140 cm
- Paper
- Qing Yi Half-Raw Xuan
- Ink
- Yi De Ge Refined Ink Juice, Boku-Undo Genso, Yi De Ge Yun Tou Yan
The small white door at the bottom of the arch is the one left open after everyone has gone to bed. The light is the kitchen, someone at the counter in socks, drinking water straight from the tap because every glass is in the dishwasher. The hall between here and there is all dark wool, and I walk it with one hand on the wall, reading the plaster like a map. I could call out. I don't. Some love is only leaving a light on and letting the other person find their own way back to bed. Halfway down, the floorboard that always creaks creaks, and the light at the end stays exactly where it is.
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
- radial arch fan around a small inner arch; horizontal bars and slab at left
- Movement
- arcs sweep down to the opening; left bars run horizontal against them
- Coverage
- ink on about four fifths of the paper
- Tone
- four tonal steps, weighted dark
- Layering
- pale, mid and dark passes; readable in upper fan and left bars
- Edges
- crisp along arc walls; broken and grainy at band and bar ends
- Feibai
- none
- Open paper
- pale wedge at top left; white notch at lower centre; arched opening
- Chance marks
- water-stain blotches in bottom-left block; faint creases across central dark fan
- Frame
- runs off left, bottom, right and top centre; top-left corner stays open
A great arch of stepped grey opens across the paper and narrows, band by band, to a small white doorway low on the right. The eye goes down the fan and through that door in one movement. On the left, flat bars and a dark slab lean in toward it.
The arc bands hold the sheet up. Each pass of dilute ink keeps its wall as it curves, and the half-sized paper stops it from bleeding into the next, so the greys stack in a legible order from pale rim to dark core. Where a band ends, the brush has dragged, and the grain shows through in fine streaks. The upper fan, where translucent passes cross, is the richest surface here.
The bottom-left block undoes some of this. It is filled where the arcs are drawn, blunt at its ends, and it buries the passes beneath it. Water has pooled and dried in blotches at its right end. The central dark wedge is sealed and flat as well, so the core reads as a surface rather than a depth.
The arch is well built and the greys are controlled. The lower left is a real debt, and the arch bears that weight without coming down.
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: 0.034 (under 0.045 reads as flat).
Five reads, agreeing on 4 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 layered fan around an arch, in R3's mode but weaker. The layering is ordered and legible, but the dark masses are flat inside. The left slabs and bottom-left block are blunt and crowd the arrangement.”
The arc bands around the central arch are coherent and follow the stroke's travel. The left horizontal bars and the bottom-left block are blunt slabs of ink.
WEAKEST Bottom-left rectangular slab, bulky and blunt
STRONGEST Concentric arch bands following the brush's travel
Four tonal steps and a good range of greys in the outer arcs. The dark-interior modulation of 0.034 is flat, and the central black fan and bottom-left block are uniform inside.
WEAKEST Flat central dark fan and bottom-left block
STRONGEST Translucent grey arc bands with dry-brush grain
Several translucent passes overlap legibly across the fan. Their order is readable, and the stepped overlaps build depth toward the central arch.
WEAKEST Bottom-left block covers the lower passes
STRONGEST Overlapping translucent arc segments around the arch
The radiating arch gives a clear direction into the small white opening. The left bars and the heavy bottom-left block feel added on, and the lower-centre white is leftover.
WEAKEST Heavy bottom-left block crowding the lower edge
STRONGEST Radiating fan drawing the eye into the arch
The ink is controlled, with grain at the band edges. The bottom-left block has small mottled blotches, and the dark fan shows faint crease lines. These are minor at viewing distance.
WEAKEST Mottled blotches inside the bottom-left dark block
STRONGEST Dry-brush grain at the edges of the arc 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, 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: 11 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 45 edge segments, 49% crisp, 49% soft or bloomed, 2% 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
2026.06.06, day 160 of the Crucible Year, one of 11 paintings from that date. 30 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_342 among all 402
Every painting of the year by date; this one is outlined.
Materials
- Paper
- Qing Yi Half-Raw Xuan, Jingxian Sichijian Xuan Paper Arts & Crafts Co., Ltd., made unknown
- 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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