Ai Weiwei and Hannah Stonehouse Hudson comparison

Ai Weiwei is a Chinese artist, architect, photographer, and filmmaker. He is active in all of these plus more. Ai Weiwei even has his own website with his art and stories told by him. Ai Weiwei is active in human rights including political art along with his hatred towards the Chinese government.

Hannah Stonehouse Hudson is an outdoor adventurer and pet photographer. Hannah Stonehouse Hudson has a different story with her pains and struggles in life. As we heard during class, her husband passing away seeing her emotion towards that was compelling.

Ai Weiwei is trying to fight political rights and stand up to his government. His goal is to use his art to inspire and connect with people trying to solve activism issues. As shown below, this is Ai Weiwei showing his emotion towards political buildings or objects.

Hannah Stonehouse Hudson is a local to Wisconsin, her photo of Schoep and John Unger in Lake Superior made her an overnight rockstar! Hudson is trying social media as a way to share her work and expand the community of her talents of photography.

Both Ai Weiwei and Hannah Stonehouse Hudson both use their artwork to make an impact in the way they choose. Ai Weiwei’s art is for older individuals that have a hatred towards the government or dislike for it. But, even Ai Weiwei likes pets. He is more of cat person compared to Hannah with dogs. Ai Weiwei’s cat even looks like him!

Hannah Stonehouse Hudson’s artwork/photography is for everyone of all ages because pets are a huge part of her life. Her art is less aggressive and it’s relaxing. The happiness pets bring to people is amazing.

To wrap up all of this information, I have a couple of questions for the viewers. Do you think Ai Weiwei and Hannah Stonehouse Hudson make the same amount of impact to the world? Or just to their area they are located in?

Artists from Different Worlds

Ai Wei Wei: a globally renowned activist and artist. Hannah Stonehouse Hudson: a local Wisconsin photographer. While these artists may seem completely different, art, no matter its creator, has the potential to impact and touch people around the world. However, the approach and goal of Ai Wei Wei and Hannah are very different, and those differences deserve recognition. How are they different? Let’s find out!

This is Ai Wei Wei. He is a Chinese artist who uses the power of his art to highlight and expose government issues, and to make controversial statements.Ai Wei Wei considers himself both an activist and artist and the two are interconnected, as he frequently uses his art for activism, and activist issues as inspiration for his art. His art is powerful and beautiful. His social presence is dynamic: sometimes thought provoking, and sometimes hilarious. You should definitely check him out on social media. You can follow him on twitter  instagram  and his facebook 

Ai Wei Wei loves social media, and he’s pretty much an expert at it too. Since the Chinese government has strict rules on its citizen’s internet usage, Ai Wei Wei has had to thoroughly educate himself on them, so he can find and use loopholes to continue sharing his message and art. Using social media, he released names of people who had passed, and asked his followers to each read one name, to give respect to the people who died. Ai Wei Wei has an international audience, and he uses this to spread the truth about what’s happening, whether that be natural disasters or the own police brutality he’s faced.  

 Ai Wei Wei uses social media, such as twitter, blogs, Instagram, and facebook, to carry his message throughout the world. He posts provocative posts, such as his famous middle finger posts, which garners attention to his accounts. He also posts important and serious issues, knowing that his large and global social media audience will see and spread the message. Ai Wei Wei also connects with others through skype, relaying his message and making lasting connections to create a community around his art. 

“I mean you cannot always just demand for ideology – you have to see a way how to make it happen.”-Ai Wei Wei. To me, this quote highlights the essential essence of Ai Wei Wei and his art. He is not simply demanding justice, he conceptualises ways to expose and educate issues and then composes it. This quote came from this  interview with him in 2015. The interview, by Monica Tan, gives you a look into the deep thought process behind Ai Wei Wei and his actions. Being one of my favorite artists, I hope you look into his art, and perhaps you will become inspired by it the way I have been.

My favorite piece by Ai Wei Wei. An integration of history and current, making you question whether one should be valued over the other. 

Alright, now that you know more about Ai Wei Wei and his art, I have a question for you. Do you see Ai Wei Wei as more of an activist or artist? Or, are the two too interconnected to separate? Me? I think you can’t have his art without his activism, and his activism without his art. He is simultaneously an artist and activist, and to try and separate the two, would be a disservice to him.

This is Hannah Stonehouse Hudson. A photographer from Wisconsin. Hannah had one of her photos go viral overnight. Hannah’s viral photo, one of her friend soothing his dog’s arthritis in the lake, garnered lots of attention creating a community surrounding the photo. You can check out Hannah at her blog  and her twitter 

Hannah’s photo that went viral

 

Hannah’s goal is to use social media as a platform to share her work and build a community around her photography

Posting her photos to facebook and her blog, Hannah connects with her community of followers. Her followers can then share her work that they connect with, exposing it to a larger community of viewers. After Hannah’s photo went viral, she received a lot of attention. Since social media allows for anonymity, she received both support and hate. Many criticized the photo, stating she was using the dog in pain for her photos. People also pried into her personal life, showing up at her house, and berating her on social media during hard times. 

After Hannah’s photo went viral, and she encountered the strong community is created, and also the backlash, she gave a Ted Talk on her experiences. The Ted Talk is an insightful look into the virtual community social media creates, highlighting both the positive and negatives. 

Now that you know more about this talented photographer, I have another question. Do you think there is ever a way to remove the hate that having a large audience on social media gives you? Or will the comfort of anonymity always keep it there?

Compare: Hannah Stonehouse Hudson & Ai Weiwei

Hannah Stonehouse Hudson and Ai Weiwei.  These are the names of two people who have sparked a reaction in people around the world through their art.  Even though they didn’t have the same reason for sharing their art, social media allowed them to become big voices in peoples lives and eventually helped them spread their messages to the world.

Hannah Stonehouse Hudson is a photographer.  She didn’t think twice before she helped her friend, John Unger, by taking photos of him and his dying dog, Schoep.  Hannah just wanted to be able to capture a special moment between a man and man’s best friend (which she greatly achieved).  In Hannah’s eyes, her fame that came over night was an unexpected reaction from the internet world.

This is the photo that Hannah Stonehouse Hudson took of her friend, John Unger, and his dog, Schoep.

Since then, Hannah has tried to use her internet popularity to teach people her belief: people can connect positively and make bonds through social media.  Not only does she use her interactions with others on social media as a way to teach people her theory, but she also, personally, goes to talk with companies about how they can positively utilize social media to better their business and she has done a TED Talk sharing how she believes people can connect through social media.

Hannah makes sure that everything she puts on social media is positive and if she makes a comment directed towards someone else, she tries to be as helpful as she can.  Having one of her posts go viral has made Hannah very aware of what she puts on social media because she’s been through both the good and bad of it.  If you click here, there’s a link that will take you to her blog where you can look at more of her work and what she’s has all done in the past couple of years.  There’s a video, here, that I found of an interview with John Unger about how donations received from the people that have seen Hannah’s photo have helped Schoep live longer than what was expected.  This video shows how powerful a simple post on the internet can be.

Ai Weiwei’s social media fame came about a little differently than Hannah’s did.  Ai Weiwei began as an artist making art with different materials that he posted pictures of to his blog when he was finished with them.  He was noticed when he posted to his blog people, that he had recorded, saying the names of all of the children that died during an earthquake due to badly, government built schools.

A tweet from Ai Weiwei getting people to help him with his fight against the government.

This was the start to Ai Weiwei’s fight against the Chinese government.  Although the government shut down his blog, Ai Weiwei continues to protest against them in other ways.  Unlike Hannah who did not try to go viral, Ai Weiwei has purposefully been trying to get his word out to the world about the corrupt Chinese government.

Ai Weiwei’s goal is for everyone in China to have better rights.  He believes that the people of China are being treated unfairly.  Through social media, Ai Weiwei can express his opinions freely.  His theory is that social media can help spread the word about his fight against the Chinese government around the world.  Ai Weiwei puts up events that occurred between him and police on twitter to show the corruption of the government.  He also posts pictures of his art work on social media.  Each piece of work is usually a symbol for what wrong doing the government has done or for a right that is not given to the Chinese people.

 

This is a picture Ai Weiwei took after an encounter with the police turned violent.

These are powerful words that Ai Weiwei wrote to put on twitter along with the picture he took from above.

One piece of art work of his that has been really noticed is the wall that Ai Weiwei filled with children’s backpacks to represent all of the children who died in the collapse of the schools in the earthquake.  The backpacks spell out, “She lived happily on this earth for 7 years”.  If you’d like to learn more about Ai Weiwei, you can watch “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry”, a film, directed by Alison Klayman, that shows Ai Weiwei in action and helps people understand more about why Ai Weiwei is fighting.

Artwork that Ai Weiwei made after an earthquake that killed many school children.

Both Hannah Stonehouse Hudson and Ai Weiwei are now using social media for their benefit.  They use it to help them spread their opinions, not only about social media, but also about other things that are going on in their lives.  What do you think about the methods Hannah and Ai Weiwei are using to make people aware of their beliefs? Do you think that they’re effective?  Why, or why not?

Hannah’s Twitter

Ai Weiwei’s Twitter

Alison Klayman’s Twitter

Trailer to “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry”

Ai Weiwei’s and Hannah Stonehouse Hudson’s Social Media Connections

In today’s post, I will be comparing the social media movements of Ai Weiwei and Hannah Stonehouse Hudson in my own opinion. Ai Weiwei is not your typical artist, he does art in many ways and forms to get people to understand what is right. Hannah Stonehouse Hudson is not your average photographer either. She tells stories through her photographs and gets people together within the virtual world. One is also a major dog person, where the other is a major cat person. Can you tell which one is which? First, I will start off with Ai Weiwei and continue towards Hannah Stonehouse Hudson.

The first thing that I will talk about would be the problem and goal that Ai Weiwei is trying to resolve. It seems that he wants to bring out the voices of his people on social issues where it is extremely hard to do so. He wants people to experience the freedom of speech, the freedom of being able to do what is right. “Once you experience freedom, it stays in your heart. No one can take it away,” (Ai Weiwei).

His theory would be allowing ordinary people a chance to change public opinion. He tries to make his presence and thoughts known to the public, which encourages people to do the same. “If we don’t push, nothing happens. Life is more interesting when you make a little effort,” (Ai Weiwei). You can find more information about Ai Weiwei here.

The methods and strategies he used all depended on what he was doing at the time being. Most of the time he tweets his thoughts on Twitter, making what he thinks of social issues known to the world. He actually had his own blog for a time before it was forcefully shutdown, this was when he turned to Twitter instead. Other times he creates sculptures, such as, the children’s backpack wall that spelled out this sentence; “She lived happily on this earth for seven years”. Other projects he created can be found here.

Hannah Stonehouse is another social media sensation. Her goal and/or problem in mind was finding others within a virtual community and commuting everybody’s interests through social media. This may also lead to her photography work, where she lives to tell stories about pets (mainly about dogs), factories, bird dog sessions, or editorial work. If you would like to see more of her photography, you can visit this site here.

Her theory was spreading word and forming communities with people whom shared the same interests. She wanted to share the “LOVE” that was once shared to her though troubling times. There was a TEDX show about herself and more of what she is doing called The Empathy and Power of Virtual Communities.

The methods that are used are mainly her photography and posting it through social media. She shares her photos on Facebook since she likes to give people a little look before she does something with her photographs. Once it went on, it went viral. This is what happened when she took a photo of John Unger and his dog Schoep. John Unger would go into Lake Superior with Schoep and lets him fall asleep against him. For more information about John Unger and his dog Schoep story, go to this site.

Their problems may be different, yet almost a little the same as well. Both Ai Weiwei and Hannah Stonehouse Hudson want to their communities to be more open into the world. They both send out their thoughts and comments through social media to create a community people whom share the same interests as they do and want to help change. I guess the main difference between the two would be on how they do it to get their ideas across. What about you? What do you think of Ai Weiwei’s and Hannah Stonehouse Hudson’s ways of spreading word through their art?

Read My Lips

JULIA PROBST- what the players are saying but the fans can’t hear.

What is the problem this person is trying to solve or their goal?
Julia is solving many problems, coming from an athlete, the biggest issue with fans experiencing the games they watch would be the emotion that is displayed during games. Being able to tell fans what the players and coaches are saying is a game changer. It puts you in the game, you know what is going on. You are able to track the ups and downs of a game by hearing what is being said on the field. In the big picture, its bringing awareness to not only the deaf community and their struggle, but also the amazing skills they may have such as Lip reading.

What is their theory?
Her theory is she can enhance a fans experience of a game while bringing attention and awareness to the deaf community

What is the strategy this person has employed to solve the problem?

The strategy would be using a skill that most people in this world don’t have, lip reading.

Questions for Julia

Can you tranalate your tweets to English ? Heres one way

Can you explode this? find someone to start a program for their local team. They do it for concerts ? how about Professional games ?

My story

Whats on the menu? Now at Northland, we know whats on the car menu and whether we want to use a meal on the car or the chub.

What is the problem you are trying to solve?

Confusion on the menu. Plan your day out better

examples of the types of tweets – Today on Northlands menu we have fried chicken and pizza, as well as our salad bar always running. Chub or no?

Twitter Stories

I watched the twitter twitter story about the Caltrain by Ravi Pina. Pina finds it very frustrating not knowing why there is a train delay and when it will arrive if late, so he wanted to find a way for people to communicate with each other so that they can get updates and other info on the trains.

Pina thought it would be a great idea to create a Caltrain twitter account that gives followers real time updates on whats happening. Users on the train or standing on the platforms can send an email to Caltrain on whats going on and it gets sent over to twitter. over 90k people follow the account. There is also a backup site at Caltrain.com

 

I am on the Northland lacrosse team and I think we could use twitter to live tweet updates on games and post upcoming events. Being that we have only three home games, people from Northland aren’t going to be going to the away games, but if they want to know what the score is, having a twitter account tweeting about it would solve that.

Twitter Stories

This twitter story is about the future of public health. Dr. Mark Dredze and Michael Paul discovered a program called Machine Learning that identified what tweets are relevant to health and what tweets that are not.

1.5 Million tweets were talked about health. The company is called Human Language Technology. Twitter provides feedback when a question is developed by Dr. Mark Dredze and Michael Paul.

“They demonstrated that Twitter can accurately track the spread of influenza, the peak of allergies and predict how diseases spread and change over time. Their research suggests new uses for big data.”

Michael Paul tweeted this about health change.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970204468004577169073508073892

https://twitter.com/mjp39?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfwtwittershot

STORY

Live tweeting can be helpful to the Northland community by keeping the campus updated with school and sporting events.

People are wondering what is on the menu and today’s special for each meal.

How could  we fix this? What would be the point of this?

Live tweeting would solve this problem by explaining/saying what is on the day’s menu. The student population would not have to wait and see what is in the cafe, compared to checking their phone and looking what food sources will be available. For example, for breakfast a tweet could look like.

“Good morning Jack and Jills, our breakfast is starring french toast as today’s special alongside with the usual eggs, bacon, sausage, and a variety of fruits.”

 

 

 

 

Japan Disaster from 2011

The twitter story that I have read was from a sea of fire (with a Tweet) and it was about the natural disaster that happened in Japan in 2011. At 2:46 pm, a 9.1 magnitude earthquake took place 231 miles northeast of Tokyo. This earthquake caused a 30-foot wave tsunami. The earthquake of 2011 was the largest to hit Japan. For more information on what happened can be found here. 

The problem was that a major earthquake occurred, causing a tsunami that damaged Japan. Family and friends, whether being across the world or within Japan themselves were worried for their loves ones. They wanted to try and get a hold of them somehow. Their theory was to send out messages to their loved ones and see if anybody needed help. These tweets would then be re-tweeted and cause a chain reaction that spreads throughout the entire world.

 

Their strategy use was simple. People on the opposite side of the world sent messages or re-tweeted messages across the world. Family and friends can check up on their loves ones through twitter due to Japan’s electricity factories being destroyed due to the tsunami.

I couldn’t exactly find the main site for Japan’s earthquake, so I searched around and found @AnimeGivesBack. This is a site on Twitter that gets people to donate to help Japan’s victims get back up on their feet. They have raised over $40,000 for the 2011 earthquake and continue to do so today with other earthquakes that have recently happened. I have tweeted two questions, but no response back yet. The questions I asked were, “I heard that the area where the disaster happened in 2011 will be able to finally be rebuilt. Is that true?” and “Was the earthquake back in 2011 the main reason you started raising money to help Japan?”. 

Ever get tired of wasting a trip to the cafeteria just to find out that you don’t want anything that they are serving? With the help of Cuinn G. Blair, we decided to think of a way of how to let people know “What’s on the menu?” and to help the cafeteria get extra student workers. No one wants to be low on workers on a busy night.

The problem would be people not knowing “what’s on the menu?” and for the cafeteria to get more workers when they are low. Some people, at least me, don’t want to waste a trip or a meal when going to the cafeteria. Yes, there is a little menu, but that may involve walking into the Ponzio building when one does not need to. The other problem would be that the cafeteria may or may not be low on student workers, so they need help with letting people know that they are hiring.

They type of tweets would mainly be updated versions. An example of that would be how @Caltrain uses updates to let people know if something is wrong or if there is any change is scheduling. This type of tweeting system would work perfectly for the cafeteria due to updating the menu and updating hire for work.

Twitter Stories: “Trick or Tweet”

Twitter stories are everywhere these days. The website https://stories.twitter.com/ allows you to scroll through twitter stories and check out the ones you’re interested in. It opens your eyes to how influentialsocial media can be.  I watched a  video on the twitter story “Trick or Tweet” and then read through the tweets in the trickortweet tag on twitter.  Check out the video below for some more insight to why this twitter campaign was created!

What was the goal of Trick or Tweet?: Trick or Tweet was started at the Packard Children’s Hospital in Palo Alto, CA. It was created to enable parents of sick children to be able to experience their child’s holiday even if they weren’t able to be there in person.

What was their Theory? The staff at Packard Children’s Hospital wanted to ensure their patients and their families could still have a good holiday even with the difficult circumstances. They theorized that they could keep parents updated and involved in their child’s halloween through social media. Also, they wanted to create a sense of normalisy for both the kids and the parents and bring some happiness for all!

 What methods did they use? Jake Lore, child specialist at Packard Hospital, helps run the trick or treating in the hospital every year.This year, he set up the hastag “trickortweet” on the hospitals twitter https://twitter.com/StanfordChild. Since some parents weren’t able to make it to watch their kids trick or treat, staff snapped pictures of the action and posted them to twitter using that hastag. This allowed family members to be updated on the festivities, and hopefully see a picture or two of their own child.

Questions: While what Packard Hospital is doing with socail media is amazing, can you think of anyway to improve the use of social media on holidays to make it easier for families to find pictures of their own child? Or do you think the way they’re doing it currently is best.

 

Next, our proffesor challenged us to create an idea for a  twitter story that we could use in our own lives.

My twitter story goal: Most Northland students, at least those on campus, eat in the caf daily, and many are disspointed once they get inside at their food choices. There’s always the sigh of regret when you get in the caf and realize you should have just gone to the Chub. So, my goal is to make students aware of the menu before they go in. Yes, there’s usually a menu posted outside, but I’m not sure most students are aware it’s even there!

Theory: My theory is if lunch staff and students tweet about what’s on the menu and whats good that day, students would be able to check twitter before heading to the caf and decide which food route they want to go. It’s a way of crowd sourcing information.

Methods: Through a designated hastag on twitter, anybody who wanted to update people could tweet out info using the tag. For example, if the tag was #ncfood, someone who was first in for lunch, could tweet “pizza and pasta today in the caf it’s a good food day #ncfood” and on the same day someone could tweet “vegan options are poor today, grab a chub #ncfood” so you can get a variety of opinions on the food and go with what you think is best!

Twitter Stories

I read the Public Health Researchers twitter story the future of public health. Michael Paul and Mark Dredze wanted to know what information you could obtain from twitter about public health. In order for them to do this they had to figure out a way to search for illnesses. One example from the video was that they could not just search fever, as there were many people who had Bieber Fever. With the results they wanted to see if they could predict how illnesses would spread. Their hopes where to further the research on twitter and tracking illnesses and predicting the spread of it.

The theory behind this is that most people do not go to the doctor when they have a cold or even the flu which you can read more about in the Wall Street Journal article Health Care Is Next Frontier for Big Data. So with searching on twitter you can locate all the people who are sick and may not be in the CDC’s data, it can also add to the map of where the illness is located and could give surrounding communities a heads up about the potential for the disease-spreading.

Michael and Mark created a program to scan through the Tweets and to locate those that has illnesses in them. If you visits Michael’s website you can view the different research projects that he has been a part of. On his twitter page he lists his interests as data, language, social media and healthcare. From what I have read and understand is that he wanting to find a way to map out how illnesses spread and how to track it efficiently.

I tweeted two questions to @twitterstories @mjp39 in regard to the article. As of right now I have not got any responses. As I was searching the internet for some images I came across one that I think really shows how far Social Media has taken us, and our government. Below are tweets from the Marketplace, with links to learn more about health benefits.

I am apart of the Northland College weather club, and we could use twitter to relay the message of global warming and the impacts that it is having on us now. It could also be used to educate the community on ways that they could help the environment. People are on social media all the time. They would share the story with their friends who would then share it with their friends. It is a fast efficient way of getting the information out there and having it reach people outside of your own network.

The problem we would be addressing is letting people know that Global warming is a real thing. That the impacts of it are happening now and could lead to greater issues down the road. An article that I read and presented in my Oceanography class Climate Change Could Trigger Collapse of Major Ocean Current outlines the outcome of the ocean current, which is a major driver for the climates around the globe. Below is a picture of a future scenario if the AMOC would collapse.

 

 

The types of tweets I would create would be:

Global warming is real, ocean current in danger of collapse! @NOAAClimate

If we all do our part, we can help save Earth! @NOAA