A shared idea. Since around 2006.

Art Of Madness

Thinking outside the box?

We’re not even in the same solar system.

We’re a bunch of people with a persistent habit of pushing things further. Further than the obvious answer, further than the accepted limitation, and occasionally further than anyone involved originally thought was sensible. We like finding out what becomes possible when you stop treating the boundaries of an idea as permanent fixtures. Above all, we like making things better, and we see no reason why doing that should exclude having an unreasonable amount of fun.

Explore the work Visit the blogs

Liquid → A guild → A shared identityThe story so far

01 Where we began

Before the madness,
there was Liquid.

The story begins on IRC, with a group called Liquid. It was not something we publicly announced or advertised. We quietly identified with an idea that suited us: we could remain malleable in thought, adapt to whatever a task required, and eventually carve our way through an obstacle. Someone put that into words, the rest of us loved it, and Liquid became a way of recognising something we had in common.

Being adaptable did not mean having no direction. It meant not becoming so attached to one shape, one method, or one way of thinking that we could no longer move. The task could change. The obstacle could change. So could our approach.

Around 2006, as those IRC days faded, Art Of Madness began as a joke name for a World of Warcraft guild. Some former members of a hardcore guild were tired of the grind but still wanted to play together and have fun. Considering that the people involved were already known as utter mad(men and/or women), the name required rather less imagination than it might appear. It was mostly an honest description.

The guild eventually disbanded, around 2008 or 2009. What brought those people together did not. The crazy ideas, the enjoyment of pushing limits, and the determination to squeeze a better outcome out of whatever we were doing had never really belonged to the game. Out of that grew Art Of Madness as a group, carrying the same attitude into everything else.

02 What stayed with us

The madness
has a direction.

We kept the instinct to min-max: to explore the possibilities, question the trade-offs, and see how much better the outcome could become. It simply stopped being confined to a game. A method, a system, an idea, or our own understanding of something can all be pushed further. Sometimes that means making a small improvement. Sometimes it means discovering that the thing everyone is carefully optimising is the wrong thing altogether.

The boundaries that interest us most are the ones in thought. The assumptions that decide which questions get asked. The habits that make one approach seem inevitable and another impossible. The point where “this is how it works” quietly turns into “this is how it must always work.” Those are interesting places to start exploring, because changing how we understand something can open possibilities that no amount of effort inside the old assumptions would ever reveal.

That includes our own assumptions. Being malleable in thought would be a fairly empty claim if we only expected other people to change theirs. Moving forward means being willing to let an idea develop beyond the shape we first gave it, even when we rather liked that shape.

Thinking outside the box is an amusing expression, but it still gives the box an awful lot of importance. We are more interested in what there is to discover when it stops being the reference point at all. Perhaps the question needs to become bigger. Perhaps two things that supposedly have nothing to do with each other belong in the same conversation. Perhaps an apparently ridiculous suggestion contains the beginning of something useful.

The ridiculous part is easy.
The art is in finding what can be made of it.

03 Where it leads

Different people.
Different pursuits.
The same urge
to move forward.

AoM is not defined by a single profession, project, or medium. The connection is between people who enjoy exploring what could be better and are willing to stretch their thinking to get there. Our interests do not have to fit neatly together for that connection to matter. Neither do we have to reach identical conclusions.

This site is a place to encounter some of what grows from that outlook. You will find writing, research, engineering, creative work, and projects at different stages of becoming whatever they are going to become. Some address practical problems. Some explore how we understand things. Others give form to something that is easier to express through words or music than through an explanation.

They are not all attempts to do the same thing. They share an unwillingness to assume that what already exists is the end of what is possible.

Read the blogs

Follow the thoughts, stories, questions, and conversations.

Explore the work

Discover the projects, research, and creative work already taking shape.

Projects Research Writing & creative work

Meet the people behind it

Begin with NorAmarth’s portfolio, one person’s work within a much broader shared idea.

We are still a bunch of bozos.
We just care a great deal about what things could become.