Frederik Vanhoutte: The Synesthetic Scientist

Extraordinary from the Ordinary: A Glimpse into Vanhoutte’s Artistic Philosophy

For Frederik Vanhoutte, art is a powerful tool for exploring and appreciating the intricacies of reality. It’s a deep-dive into the process of creation, tracing the path from simplicity to complexity, and reveling in the minute details and boundless possibilities inherent in every facet of existence, both natural and artificial.

Although he’s indisputably a physicist, Frederik’s art doesn’t orbit around rudimentary principles of quantum physics or relativity. Instead, it draws its essence from the countless hours he’s invested in assembling setups and devising models for solid-state experiments.

When encountering Processing as an artistic medium, suddenly, he found himself in possession of toy models free from the rigidity of practical applications. A revelation that sparked a profound artistic transformation, elevating these models from simple tools to potent mediums for artistic expression. They became vehicles for projecting his stream of consciousness into the tangible world, transforming his abstract thoughts into mesmerizing works of art.

As mentioned earlier, for Frederik, creation is not just a process; it’s an irresistible compulsion. He perceives alpha particles tracing paths within cells when raindrops strike the windshield, and never misses the entrancing whirlpool formed as the bath plug is released nor the intricate patterns of caustics that captivate him as he experiments with glasses on the kitchen table.

Suddenly, it’s the night, when Frederik finds himself behind the computer, staring at a mess of code and drawing random structures. A creative coding that fuels his curiosity in physical, biological, and computational systems.

Similarly, his artworks captivate the viewers and draw them into a trance-like state. “Chromatic Dazzle” being one of them, consisting of a collection of 511 pieces on fxhash, rich in generative geometry.

Another iconic piece of his is “Slicer concept: translate, rotate, skew, squash”: a GIF loop that has a similar feeling to “Chromatic Dazzle”, but with the generative geometry taking on a much more minimal style.

Digital art is Frederik Vanhoutte’s preferred medium as he believes that various forms of digital art, especially those that are not trying to emulate traditional art forms, are just as valid and important as music, dance, literature, and other means of expression.

Which leads to his distinctive artwork “Lamia”, an isometric presentation of the poem with the same name written by John Keats in 1819, where the work cycles through the 728 lines of the poem, with one line presented every 8 seconds.

His style is always changing and can be described as minimal at times, and exuberant at others. Sometimes monochromatic, other times garish, today it is pleasantly calming, but tomorrow it may be energetically nervous.

The piece “Ring feeder, specimen 17” is a beautiful example of Frederik Vanhoutte’s more calming and relaxing style of generative geometry in Processing. Here, the spectator can zoom in and get lost within the intricate details of the piece as it continues to follow its rotating motion.