GEN-01 · Tooling statement as craft

Produce one finished piece — image, short video, audio, or interactive — and a tooling statement a gallery visitor or college portfolio reviewer could trust on first read. If the statement cannot stand alone, the piece is not ready to show.

Teacher approves medium, tools, and exhibition or portfolio surface before Checkpoint 1. The student needs:

• One piece small enough to finish, not a trilogy.
• A named surface — wall, web portfolio page, printed leave-behind, or show reel slot. The surface decides what disclosure a viewer actually sees.
• A tooling-statement template fixed before making starts, with fields for: tools and versions; prompts/seeds/parameters that materially affected the result; human edits and decision points; consent notes; training-data / license unknowns; attribution line.
• School-approved generative tools only. No account that requires the student to upload classmate images to a personal consumer app without instructor review of the data path.

Writing the statement after the fact from memory. Listing every tool ever opened instead of the ones that changed the work. Hiding the generative step in jargon. Treating “AI-assisted” as enough disclosure when a viewer still cannot tell what was generated. Shipping a statement that a peer outside the class cannot understand.

A showable piece plus five attachments: (1) the tooling statement in plain language; (2) a one-line wall/portfolio attribution; (3) a short log of material decisions (at least five dated entries); (4) a peer readability check — a classmate who did not watch the process reads the statement and lists what is still unclear; (5) a refusal note naming one claim or likeness the student declined.

CT: separating what the tool did from what the student authored. CR: designing a statement a stranger can use. CO: peer readability is the instrument. CM: the attribution line. CZ: the viewer who would mis-credit the work without the statement.

A working artist, designer, gallery educator, or arts teacher reviews the statement template at Checkpoint 1 and the finished statement at Checkpoint 2. Standing instruction: reject a reconstructed-from-memory statement and reject “AI-assisted” as a complete disclosure. School-supervised, both times.

R1: one piece, one surface, one process claim. R2: log and statement would let a peer reconstruct the story. R3: non-AI baseline named. R4: unknowns listed, not papered over. R5: peer outside the process understands it. R6: refusal note present.

(a) A gorgeous piece and a paragraph of tool brand names with no decisions. (b) A perfect statement for a piece that was never actually made with those tools.

• Week 1–2: Medium, tools, and surface approved; statement template locked; consent plan if any people appear.
• Week 4–5: Piece drafted; decision log kept live; peer readability check run.
• Week 7–8: Final piece + statement; refusal note; mentor review of disclosure clarity.

Lane A immediately (arts center portfolio, AP Art and Design, IB Visual Arts, media-arts completer). Natural precursor to GEN-04. No verified credit claim.