The Rat King is a project about repetition that also explores themes of transformation. The project brief described creating a physical object that, through the use of repetition, transforms itself into something new. The Rat King takes the form of a rat, an animal often associated with disease, death, filth, and darkness, and transforms it through repetition into something beautiful. By abstracting the rat’s tails into geometric, partial circles, their tails can intersect in a way that is reminiscent of the sacred geometric symbol the Seed of Life, which represents the interconnectedness of life, beauty, and harmony. The project came together by creating digital files of the art, using a laser cutter to cut the pattern out of wood, and hand cutting and adhering the metal rat onto the pattern. The lone metal rat shows the role of the individual in collective change: by itself it cannot create transformation, yet the transformation cannot occur without it.