Online Maestro: "Teacher Ai"

Ai's Earthquake Campaign A 'TweetUp' in Chengdu Taking a Stand Ai's Extracurriculars And Check Out

Ai's Earthquake Campaign

Ai Weiwei launched a "Citizens' Investigation" into the May 2008 Sichuan quake that killed 70,000, including more than 5,000 children. His team of volunteers were given cameras, and they found out and published victims' names, including almost all the children's names. Ai tweets the names of the victims on their birthdays, using the hashtag #512birthday:

Ai took this now-famous photo of himself in an elevator shortly after he was hit in the head by local police in Chengdu, where he had come to support a local earthquake activist who'd been jailed by the government:

When Ai opened an exhibit at the Haus der Kunst museum in Munich, he covered the building's exterior with children's backpacks, much like the ones he'd seen in Sichuan. They spelled out what the mother of one earthquake victim told him: "She lived happily on this earth for seven years." Using TwitPic, Weiwei tweeted photos of the installation to his followers:

Shortly before the opening in Munich, Weiwei was hospitalized, and doctors found bleeding in his brain, which he said was from the earlier beating by Chengdu police. He tweeted photos from the hospital, like the one below, to his followers:

You can see more of Ai's photos of earthquake damage on his blog.

A "TweetUp" in Chengdu

When Ai returned to Chengdu in April 2010, he tweeted about his dinner plans at a laoma tihua restaurant, a Chengdu specialty. Some of his followers showed up to join him -- an unprecedented meet-up between his supporters.

"Then it was this really weird sensation where everybody knew that by simply eating dinner there, it was an act of defiance. They were taking photographs of each other and posting the photographs to Twitter," recalls The New Yorker's Evan Osnos, who was at the dinner that night.

Taking a Stand

Ai also uses his Twitter feed to recommend readings and videos, and to call attention to censorship and crackdowns, including his brief house arrest in November 2010 and the demolition of his studio in January 2011.

Ai's Extracurriculars

Spend time perusing Ai's photos and it doesn't take long to discover his penchant for giving haircuts. Below, American art assistant Lucas Lai, an unidentified friend and Twitter follower @wentommy model their new 'dos. Behind them are the names of earthquake victims collected through the "Citizens' Investigation."

You'll also find photos of Ai's many cats. Here, he poses playfully with one of them.

And, occasionally, he bids his loyal followers 'good night.'

And Check Out:

Ai's "Internet Cat-and-Mouse Games"
Filmmaker Alison Klayman's explanation of how the artist circumvents China's Web censors. From Google Documents to file-sharing sites, Klayman says Ai relies on a "functional, but complicated" system to blog, tweet and distribute his films online.

The Bird's Nest
Because the Chinese language is more dense than English, Chinese twitter users can fit more into Twitter's character limit, while English translations of Chinese tweets often do not fit on Twitter. The Bird's Nest is a Tumblr of some of Ai Weiwei's tweets translated into English through a small network of volunteers. You can read more about how Ai uses Twitter and some of the challenges in translating and contextualizing culturally-specific references in this interview with an editor of the Bird's Nest Tumblr.

Censorship in China: Leaping the Wall
The Economist explores how 2011's uprisings in the Middle East have spurred a change in tactic by China's internet police, which have begun to make access to firewall blocking services more inconvenient.

Global Voices: China
Global Voices, an international network of bloggers, features a variety of resources on Internet use, censorship and activism in China, including this survey on Chinese Twitter users.

China's Internet: Staking Digital Ground
The organization Human Rights in China has extensive resources on digital activism and Internet censorship in China, including this report on how online videos have been critical to citizen movements in China, background on China's Internet censorship system and this analysis of how Chinese authorities view the internet.