Location: Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics - University of Colorado, Boulder/NIST - Boulder, CO | Status: Installed March 2014 | Medium: Cast Aluminum, Black Oxide

The Rulers is an icon for JILA’s excellence in its three major areas of research – Astrophysics, Precision Measurement, and Quantum Physics. Each figure represents one of these areas.

The relief was digitally designed and realized via cnc milling for investment casting. Compressing the design in one dimension lent most of the constraint and, as a result, it was treated as an extruded painting of sorts. 

Techniques were developed to manipulate light including a recursive fractal in which cells could be extruded or recessed.