Ader's Éole - from a dream.

**Paper Kosmonaut** · #1 12-26-2019, 11:58 AM

I went a little bit out of the regular build process.

Some years ago I built Clément Ader's Éole, a steam-powered aircraft from 1890 which allegedly flew a few dozens of meters , just 50 centimeters from the ground. Whether if it's true or not, the aircraft itself is a beautiful thing to behold with its bat-like wings and its pretty shaped fuselage. The first four images show that build in recently made photos.

Now, my real profession, as some of you might know, is film maker. A friend of mine from that 'scene' won 'best film' in last year's local film competition with her dreamy animation 'Memories wrapped in paper planes". Her film has a very poetic and dreamy quality and rewatching it a couple of days ago it inspired me to build the Éole again, but in a more surreal and etheric way.

Another thing included in this build: years ago when in France, I discovered a small white plume moth, who had found its eternal sleep in a patch of wet moss. Its shape, its fragility struck me. These two things came together in this build.
I kind of wanted to depict the fragility of flying, the slight impossible phenomenon of keeping something much heavier than air up in the sky.

For this build I mainy used Japanese paper, very thin and very fibrous and translucent. I frayed the trailing edges of the wings to emphasize its fragility. The paper allowed itself to be easily frayed and ripped in one direction, the other was quite sturdy. When I reinforced the leading edge, the strip was a little too long but when I looked at it, the ends felt like insect's antenna. I left them on.
While it started to look like a living creature, I still wanted it to be an airplane so it got a propeller. But no wheels or skids or anything. This is a plane from a dream, it has always danced in the sky on laughter-silvered wings.

It might perhaps only land on clouds.