WTF - WHAT THE FAX
Communication event
Toride/Japan, 2017
You always wanted to send a fax but none of your friends, family members, colleagues or business-partners owns a fax machine you could send it to? Take the opportunity of sending a fax to the last place on earth were fax machines still exist and leave your trace in a temporary time capsule on thermal paper.
Japan has a reputation of being one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world. It takes a global lead in producing robots and providing its population with fast broadband Internet. But in comparison to probably every other country in the world, Japan also adheres to a pre-Internet technology - the fax machine.
In the 1970’s the fax was such a success, that it’s still omnipresent in offices and homes and a big part of daily communication. 40 years later some Japanese don’t have an email address but most probably a fax number. The loyalty to the fax machine has many reasons (the love for paperwork, the importance and simplicity of handwriting, a strong security concern etc.) but mainly the fax machine is still there because it has always been there. The average age in Japan is relatively high, so the offices are ruled by the generation that was growing up with the fax machine. Change is happening slowly or never and the mainstay of the fax machine could be seen as a direct manifestation of Japan’s resistance to deviate from the established way of doing things.
You have the chance to send your last (and maybe first) fax directly to the 8x8 Gallery space in Toride/Japan, before the young generation will eventually take over Japanese offices and replace the good old fax machine by a yet unknown futuristic tool. All contributions will be printed by the fax machine on one roll of thermal paper to create a temporary time capsule. This homage to the fax machine era will fade over time, just as the fax machine itself will eventually disappear - maybe even in Japan.