This Fax Machine Is Fighting for Progress
The New York Civil Liberties Union and Huge harness the power of retro technology to publicize the limits of arcane legislation.
The first weeks of June are often the busiest for New York state legislators, as they close the budget and introduce the bills that have been procrastinated on for months. This year, those bills include the Reproductive Health Act (RHA), which would protect New Yorkers’ rights in the event of federal action to restrict abortion access.
Huge and the New York Civil Liberties Union partnered to bring attention to the state’s antiquated abortion laws with a conceptual art installation that doubles as a digital marketing event. The campaign, which lasts during the final two days of New York’s legislative session, centers around the Facts Machine, a retro fax machine that churns out statistics and talking points about the state’s current abortion laws and the RHA for 1,970 minutes.
The effort, livestreaming on NYCLU’s Facebook, Instagram, and nyfactsmachine.com, draws attention to the fact that the state’s laws haven’t changed since 1970, and the RHA — which would at least decriminalize abortions to match the standards of Roe v. Wade — have been stuck in the state Senate since January. The campaign also encourages people to text “FAX” to the number 347–933–6965 to e-fax a message in support of a vote and the passage of the RHA to New York State Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.
The NYCLU approached Huge in early June to help them find a creative way to promote the RHA in the final days of Albany’s legislative session. This year the organization delivered 60,000 petitions to legislative leaders, rallied outside of the capitol, and demonstrated outside of Senate chambers, but still “wanted to find new language to describe an old problem, and in a way that would inspire individuals to reach out to their representatives,” says Lauren Frederico, director of organizing at the NYCLU. “With abortion rights under attack in Washington, there is increased urgency to fix New York’s inadequate and outdated abortion law.”
In just seven days, Huge’s team of designers, developers, and technologists developed an integrated campaign that would educate and involve viewers. The final concept elevated and transcended social media in a clever way, communicating the importance of modern legislation by putting it in the context of technology. “By deploying outmoded technology in a modern way, the Facts Machine instantly communicates that New York’s abortion law is equally outmoded,” Frederico says.
“I love how the piece is intentionally designed to demand attention” says Fern Diaz, director of marketing and special projects at Huge. “The facts come out in this slow, clunky way, which leads the viewer to meditate on each of the chilling facts, which is an interesting contrast in the age of fast scrolling.”
To create the Facts Machine, the team used a dot matrix printer to emulate a fax machine and built an SMS-based app that could automatically send a fax from a text message. “We created a direct line to representatives that sits on top of the limitations of government infrastructure,” says Melanie Bossert, a senior creative technologist at Huge.
During the first day, 30,000 people viewed the campaign and sent thousands of faxes. “We heard annoyed chatter coming out of Albany that legislators’ desks were inundated with faxes, and staff was grumbling,” Frederico says. “This reaffirms what we suspected at the conception of the campaign, that in an age of text, email, smartphones, and more, it is pretty darn hard to ignore faxes.”
The issues that come to a vote in the last weeks of the legislative session are “the issues that are less of a priority, or less feasible to reach compromise,” Governor Cuomo told NY1 in early June. In New York state, getting an abortion after 24 weeks is a criminal act, even when necessary for a woman’s health or when the fetus isn’t viable, which falls short of the requirements of Roe v. Wade.
