Drue Kataoka - Wired for Speech

Description by MIT Press:

The authors commissioned Tokyo-born, nationally acclaimed Sumi-e artist Drue Kataoka to paint the original brush painting Spiral Ancient Anew for the cover of Wired for Speech. Brushed using an ancient technique from the 2,000-year-old Japanese art form Sumi-e, the ebony-inked spiral engages as a visual narrative of Nass and Brave’s research. Suspended in white space, the textured stroke of the spiral’s organic form juxtaposed against computer code immediately establishes the sophisticated relationship between human and computer. Inexorably linked in a dialogue, the spiral and the code influence and interact on all levels. The shared boundaries between black and white, between spiral and code not only represent the relationship between human and computer but also the evolution of human speech over 200,000 years.
Quote from Prof Nass:

"A typical artist asks, 'How can I embody this?' Drue asks, 'How can I deeply understand this?' [...] Drue carefully read the book, did additional research on voice, and thought deeply about the nature of processes in general and speech in particular. After weeks of digging and integrating, the two strokes for Spiral Ancient Anew emerged from her brush. Not only did this exquisite creation capture the dynamism of voice, but it mirrored the cochlea, the key nexus in the inner ear between a voice and the brain. Spiral Ancient Anew magically incorporates both the uniqueness of human speech and the future of computers as conversational partners."
Full text of quote

Wired for Speech on CNN