Ever since childhood I have always enjoyed doing things that had
something to do with sound and images. I had music lessons, started
to draw, built my own furniture and took photos like mad. I could
never settle for one particular discipline because I loved them all.
Because technical innovations were also a great inspiration to me, I
soon turned in the church organ for a synthesiser and later shifted
from the pencil and the darkroom to computer art.
After school I studied Visual Communication at the Berlin Art
College. In my spare time I worked as photographer and sound engineer.
During my various travels at this time, I swapped my camera for a
microphone and started to collect noises. This material formed the
basis for my experimental music and sample-CD projects. My instrument
collection grew to a full size, specialist electronic music studio. I
then got a job as author of a radio series on electronic music.
During these two years I created several compositions for
demonstration purposes, several of which got released on CD.
The radio broadcasts also earned me a composition contract for a
dance performance at the Berliner Schaubühne (Playhouse Theatre).
I got my first recording contract with a Hamburg-based label and
shortly afterwards another one in France. From this time onwards, all
my projects were published under the name PROPELLER ISLAND. This
pseudonym stems from a book written by Jules Verne at the end of the
nineteenth century which describes an artificial island that travels
with its inhabitants around the world - way ahead of its time! I
chose this pseudonym mainly because it sounds good in German and
English and because can refer to almost any kind of work - not just
music.
Later I founded my own record label so as to be completely independent.
Along with the many CDs with music and sound sculptures, I also
published (as PROPELLER ISLAND) several sample CDs and CD-ROMs with
unusual sound collections.
|
|
 |
The only musical excursion without the aid of a 'propeller' was with
the composer community TONART, which I joined along with other
artists in order to publish avant-garde music.
We dissolved the group after the fifth CD.
To fund my music projects and my studio, I turned two rooms in my
flat into guest's rooms. Because normal rooms it would have been far
too boring, the first rooms of CITY LODGE were created.
The rooms quickly became very popular via the press, especially in
England, and soon the letting out became so much work that I had
almost no time left for my studio projects. I decided to enlarge the
guestroom business, thinking that I would be able to hire staff and
therefore have more time for my studio. How naive! ....
An old pension hotel in the same building seemed perfect for the
expansion. I was lucky, the lease had just run out and it was up for
sale. It took over five years to complete PROPELLER ISLAND. During
that time I designed hundreds of interior elements, objects, and
pictures and drew up new concepts. As a 'non-hotelier', I had to
learn to think about safety regulations for guests and also convince
authorities of the practicality of my fantasy interiors.
It was a long hard road that makes me even more proud of my giant
work of art, since so many doubted that I would ever manage to make
it work. It is attracting art lovers from all over the worlds- even
'proper' architects and 'proper' hoteliers! :-))
The only problem is that I still haven't managed to make enough time
for the music - and that is what I wanted to achieve in the first
place, didn't I? ... Oh well, c'est la vie!
|
| |
| Lars Stroschen, Summer 2004 | Curric
|
|
|