For many in IT, cable management is a cardinal virtue. On a more practical level, managing your cables lets you quickly and easily determine what's connected to what. There's the matter of personal honor: A cleanly wired server room shows that you take pride in your workspace and respect your colleagues, who may one day have to sort out a server room mishap.

And then there are the people who take pride in making a mess out their cabling jobs, twisting and turning their Cat5e and coaxial and fiber optics cables until one color bleeds into another. Tracing where anything goes becomes work for the criminally insane. Sometimes we look at these individuals with a mix of horror, pity, and empathy because we know it could just as easily be us on a bad day (or a bad year).

But sometimes we look upon these individuals with admiration instead of horror when we see their work for what it is: art. It takes a special mind to cast a cable closet into such disarray that it resembles a Jackson Pollock painting. To honor those minds, we're highlighting five cable closets that look like modern art. (Editor's note: A special thanks to Imgur user ErinFromTheOffice for the idea and the inspiration.)

Image credit: Fritz



Image credit: Jackson Pollock

Image credit: Fiberstore_FSCOM



Image credit: Jackson Pollock

Image credit: Stratavarious



Image credit: Jackson Pollock

Image credit: ErinFromTheOffice



Image credit: Jackson Pollock

Image credit: ErinFromTheOffice



Image credit: Jackson Pollock