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1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
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Atmos
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- Description
- "The Rhône River, which flows south from the Swiss Alps through the center of France, formed a broad delta of 60,000 hectares at its mouth where it empties into the Mediterranean. This plain is called the Camargue ... in the broad expanse of the Camargue ... [a] small cloud could be seen rising ... from a steel factory at the eastern edge of the delta. At the factory, coke used in making steel is taken red-hot from the furnace, then drenched all at once with twenty tons of water. Dozens of times every day, this immense amount of water turns instantaneously to steam and goes rising into the sky over the Camargue ... The etymology of 'atmosphere' is the ancient Greek works for vapor (atmos) and sphere (sphaira). Once I learned this, the air that filled the Camargue and the steam from the steel factory seemed to fuse into one before my eyes. It no longer felt strange to see signs of humanity in the sky and the land, nor to sense nature in the cloud of steam from the factory. And I began to feel that it would no longer be possible to draw a clear line at the border between nature and the artificial"--From artist's statement.
