T_349
The engine's readingTwo fans of stepped black and grey arcs open on either side of a narrow white channel, beneath a pale half-moon of bare paper.
Record- Date
- 2026.06.06
- Dimensions
- 70 × 140 cm
- Paper
- Qing Yi Cooked Xuan
- Ink
- Yi De Ge Refined Ink Juice, Boku-Undo Genso, Yi De Ge Yun Tou Yan
When Röntgen made the first picture through a living hand, his wife Anna Bertha saw her own bones with the ring floating on them and, by the usual account, said: I have seen my death. I stand in front of these two fans the way she stood. They open like ribs from one white parting, the spine and heart, which a chest film always shows as the pale road between two dark lungs. The left lung is full, heavy, held. The right one I can watch breathe, grey letting out into paler grey, each breath leaving its edge behind. Above them hangs a pale half moon, the lightbox left on after the doctor has gone, the film still clipped there, glowing.
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 fans of arc bands, split by a central vertical gap
- Movement
- radial, swinging outward and down from top centre; nothing runs against it
- Coverage
- ink on about three quarters of the paper
- Tone
- three tonal steps, weighted dark
- Layering
- pale rings, mid greys, blacks; readable in right fan and lower greys
- Edges
- crisp band edges throughout; broken dry ends at band tips and wedge base
- Feibai
- present in the pale outer arcs, upper left and upper right
- Open paper
- narrow vertical channel rising into a half-moon at top centre; lower corners
- Chance marks
- specks lower left; grey smudges in top-centre gap; crease lines left and bottom
- Frame
- ink runs off the top edge; left, right and bottom stay open
Two fans of arc bands swing out from a pale half-moon at the top, split by a white channel that runs the height of the sheet. The eye drops through the gap and is carried outward along the curves on both sides.
The right fan is the finer of the two. Its bands step down in order, pale outer ring, then mid grey, then black, and every overlap stays legible. Cooked xuan holds ink on its surface instead of drawing it in, so each translucent pass keeps its own edge and the stack reads as depth, not mud. In the grey bands at lower centre-left the same paper shows the brush plainly: grain, streaking, density climbing stroke by stroke.
The cost sits at left centre. The big black wedge is a filled slab, flat inside and blunt at the ends, and it buries the greys beneath it, so the left side carries more weight than the arcs can swing. A crease crosses the left edge and another runs along the bottom; both stay clear of the main masses.
The sheet holds, and holds well. The structure is clear, the open paper is shaped, and the right fan could carry a sheet on its own. One heavy hand at the left keeps it from going further.
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: 0.031 (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 radial double fan close to R3 in structure, with legible, ordered translucent layering and a shaped central void. The black masses are flatter and bulkier than R3's, and minor crease lines mark the edges.”
Arc bands follow the brush's radial travel and their edges hold, but the large left black wedge reads as a filled slab with a heavy outline.
WEAKEST Bulky flat black wedge, left centre
STRONGEST Stepped arc bands of right fan
The grey arcs show grain, banding and stepped density inside. Dark interior modulation is 0.031, so the main black masses on both sides are flat inside.
WEAKEST Flat interior of left black wedge
STRONGEST Graded grey bands, lower centre-left
Several translucent passes stack in a readable order: pale outer rings, then mid greys, then black. The overlaps build radial depth on both halves.
WEAKEST Black passes cover greys at left
STRONGEST Overlapping translucent arcs in right fan
The two fans turn around a central white channel and top arc. The empty paper is shaped and the radial movement carries the eye, though the left half weighs heavy.
WEAKEST Heavy, crowded left mass
STRONGEST Central vertical gap between two fans
The ink is controlled and dry-brush grain shows in the greys. Fold or crease lines cross the left edge and the bottom right, and stray marks sit near the top centre.
WEAKEST Crease lines at left edge and bottom
STRONGEST Dry-brush grain in 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, 16 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: 2 principal ink masses traced (cyan), 6 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 18 edge segments, 89% crisp, 11% soft or bloomed, 0% 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_349 among all 402
Every painting of the year by date; this one is outlined.
Materials
- Paper
- Qing Yi Cooked 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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