Hasta La Ideas

These portraits of electronic musicians and DJs by Spanish illustrator and designer Alex Trochut show one image during the day and another at night.

Alex Trochut screenprinted two different images onto the same surface using black and phosphorescent ink in a checkerboard grid of tiny squares. When seen in the light the portrait printed in black is visible, but if viewed in the dark a different image suddenly appears.

Trochut told Dezeen that he developed the technique first and then decided on a suitable subject matter: “I thought that if I could show two different images it made sense to work on the idea of there being two sides to someone’s personality.”

The portraits reflect the notion that the musicians and DJs depicted, including Four Tet, Acid Pauli and Damian Lazarus, transform and come alive at night.

Binary Prints was first shown earlier this month at Sónar+D, the innovation and technology area at the Sónar arts and music festival in Barcelona, where many of the musicians have previously played.

Trochut initially used the idea of a camouflaged image for the cover of his monograph More is More, which featured a hidden pattern printed in glow-in-the-dark ink.

A concept for glow-in-the-dark roads was presented at Design Indaba in Cape Town earlier this year and we previously featured a book with a glow-in-the-dark cover and spine that was displayed in a room where the lights turned on and off automatically.

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Here is some more information from the designer:

Recently launched at Sonar Music Festival, Binary Prints by illustrator and designer Alex Trochut, is an ingenious technique that he’s invented to allow him to illustrate two completely different images on the same surface, one visible by day the other only visible by night.

For his first series Trochut has teamed up with some of the biggest names in electronic music such as James Murphy, Four Tet, Damian Lazarus, John Talabot and many more to create a series of portraits that explore the people behind the music.

These nocturnal images wake up when the lights go out, just as DJs come alive at night, they glow in the dark to reveal a nocturnal persona, an icon of music and sound.

The inaugural exhibition of Binary Prints will present this first series of DJ portraits, which will continuously grow as more artists are added and the show continues to tour music festivals and galleries around the world.

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Alex Trochut appeared first on Dezeen.