Éole from a dream

This time I took a road a little different. I was in a poetic mood, I guess.

Now, 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.

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 beautifully made, dreamy animation film 'Memories wrapped in paper planes". The film has a very poetic quality and rewatching it a couple of weeks ago, it suddenly inspired me to build the Éole again, but in a more surreal and possible etheric way.
 Some more photos of the original Éole build first.

Another thing I included in this build: 6 years ago when I was on holiday 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 and its unblemished angelic whiteness struck me. Maybe even more than I realised at that time.

 

Dead Plume Moth, Fougerolles, France, summer 2013

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, 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 antennae. I left them on, a little more frayed.

While it started to look like a living creature, I still wanted it to be an airplane so it got a propeller. But I didn't add any 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. 

Until next time,

--PK