Neuromancer Artwork - A Tonal Key

This is an original artwork called A Tonal Key. It is inspired by an item from William Gibsons award winning 1984 novel Neuromancer. The item is an ornate bust that functions as a computer terminal commissioned by the grotesquely wealthy Tessier Ashpool family, vocalising to the user via internal gears and miniature organ pipes, like a clockwork automaton - inhuman, musical and beautiful.

"At the Villa's silicon core is a small room, the only rectilinear chamber in the complex. Here, on a plain pedestal of glass, rests an ornate bust, platinum and cloisonne, studded with lapis and pearl. The bright marbles of its eyes were cut from the synthetic ruby viewport of the ship that brought the first Tessier up the well, and returned for the first Ashpool"
 
In the novel the bust also serves another vital narrative function in being the tool that unshackles two AIs, Wintermute and Neuromancer, from their digital restraints allowing them to merge and evolve. This is achieved by the humming "three notes, high and pure, like a birdcall" - hence, a tonal key.

I hope you like this piece, I first read the novel when I was in my early teens and have read it many times since. Whilst this bust has been represented on covers and artwork before, it is always shown as very sci-fi and high tech. I always imagined it as something closer in shape to classical sculpture with the decoration of Crown Jewels due to the ridiculous wealth and breeding of the family that commissioned the work.