Submissions close just a minute before midnight tonight in your timezone. (What could be spookier than a shifting deadline, huh?? Happy Halloween... !) UTC-12. Turns out the truly spooky thing is not understanding how a website's timekeeping works... ! Because of my mix-up in this announcement, submissions will now close at 23:59 October 31st, 2022 in the UTC-12 timezone, which is 12:59 November 1st, 2022 in UTC+1. You can check what time this is in your own timezone on this website -- just use "Baker Island" as one of your locations. This is the last place on Earth from which someone could submit a piece (though it seems this particular island is uninhabited). Should you be forced to miss this window for whatever reason and still wish to submit something, please get in touch at critcreaphil [at] gmail [dot] com and we'll see what we can do. That goes for all other concerns and questions, too!

Public voting for submissions will begin one week from today on Nov. 7th, 2022. You will have until the end of November to vote for your favorite piece. I encourage you all to (at the very least) leave a comment on the work you vote for explaining your choice, but you're all more than welcome to comment on everyone's pieces to your heart's content. It'd be really wonderful if we got some positive, constructive discussions going! As a member of the evaluation panel, I (Carlota) cannot leave comments on your projects during this time, but I will do so once the competition is over. You'll all be sure to get at least one comment from someone who's spent some time with your piece. :)

Only those who have submitted to the jam will be given permission to vote, but everyone is welcome to leave comments. We'll give submitters a special "judge" title by Nov. 7th that will let them vote. Please leave a comment on this topic if you have any trouble using this feature once it's in effect.

Prior to the start of the public voting period, the panel will take a preliminary look through all submissions to make sure they fit the competition prompt and don't break any rules. Should your submission be disqualified at this stage, we will let you know before Nov. 7th.

That's it, everybody! Thanks as always for reading.

Originally, competition winners were to be published in a student journal. We've since partnered up with the digital review, a journal specializing in just the sort of work we're looking for, and will be publishing winners there in a 2023 issue.

Please note the following changes to the jam site:

*PRIZE CHANGES*
To encourage participation from a wide variety of people, we offer the following prizes:

• 🔹 Panel winner (x 1): $500 in compensation and publication in the digital review. This prize is awarded by our panel of judges.

• 🔹 Runners-up (x 2 or 3): Publication in the digital review. This prize is also awarded by our panel of judges.

• 🔹 Popular winner: Publication in the digital review. This prize is chosen through itch.io’s jam voting system by jam participants. It goes to the highest ranked piece that has not been selected as the panel winner or as a runner-up.

• 🔹 Anywhere from 4 to 5 pieces will be chosen for publication in a 2023 issue of the digital review.
  

*RULE CHANGES*

• 🔹 3. Submissions need not be new, previously unpublished, nor expressly created for this jam. !! Change on April 15th, 2022  !! Pieces chosen for publication must be removed from itch.io a few months before the digital review issue that features them goes live. If you have published (a version of) your piece elsewhere, please contact the jam host at critcreaphil [at] gmail [dot] com to determine its eligibility for the competition.

As always, please shoot us an email at critcreaphil [at] gmail [dot] com with any questions or concerns you might have, and happy making!

Critical-creative work collapses what are typically considered two distinct activities: 1) Critical engagement with (in this case) a work of philosophy, where the object is to follow/reject/qualify its argument or to capture its spirit; and 2) the creation of an artistic work — something that solicits the imagination; plays with its medium; implicates artist or audience in the manner it unfurls.

We are interested in pieces where critical engagement with a work of philosophy takes a creative form, and where this interplay between philosophy and artistic creation is mutually illuminating. For examples, please see FAQ #3 and #4.

2. How should my critical-creative piece relate to philosophy?

Your primary source — a work of philosophy — should not just inspire your piece. It should not serve as a font for quotations, concepts, characters, axioms, etc., that you simply adapt to your piece’s subject matter (ex., “If one were to press me to say why I loved him, I feel that this cannot be expressed. […  It is because he] was he; [and I] was I.” — Montaigne on friendship). Nor should it merely occasion your piece by featuring its buzzwords (ex., Wittgenstein’s language-games) or what are commonly thought to be its takeaways (ex., Nietzsche’s ubermensch makes their own law).

Rather, your piece should be in the service of the work(s) of philosophy you’ve chosen. It could enrich, challenge, or clarify your audience’s reception of the work(s). It could prompt your audience to enact the work’s argument; tinker with its system of description; connect with one of its characters; or fiddle with the raw text of the work itself. It could juxtapose one work with another such that your audience’s understanding of both is changed in a way that only this juxtaposition could make possible. It could upset some aspect of your work’s foundations, overhaul its structure, or bring it to bear on something that was unimaginable at the time of its creation. You could take some things and leave others. We welcome anything, so long as it is both a piece of scholarship and a work of art (broadly construed).

3. What kinds of pieces can I submit?

We will accept games of any stripe (board games, solo and collaborative tabletop roleplaying games, video games, etc.); visual, aural, or literary art; and works within the digital humanities (except straightforward archives such as The Nietzsche Source and The Wittgenstein Source). The piece must feature an interactive component and may be excerpted from a larger work. We especially welcome pieces that are born-digital and are not opposed to submissions that are drafts or outright vaporware. Here are some examples:

• 🔹 Socrates in the Labyrinth by David Kolb — explores what hyperlinked, non-linear philosophical argumentation might look like in a malleable interface, with sources ranging from Plato’s Socrates to Hegel

• 🔹 The University of Iowa’s Tractaus map — visualizes Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus as a subway system

• 🔹 let’s play shadowgraphs by Cr. Sal----- -----s — a playable reimagining of the “Shadowgraphs” fragment from Kierkegaard’s Either/Or

Please note that your piece must be (and remain) free for all to access. We accept submissions in any language. If you’re looking for inspiration, we frequently highlight examples of critical-creative pieces from other disciplines and pitch ideas for individual pieces on our Twitter feed. You are welcome to develop these ideas into your own projects – just link back to the original Tweet.

4. I still don’t really get it. Can you give me more examples of critical-creative work?

Here are some examples (of, I should note, works that we consider critical-creative but would not accept as submissions — compare FAQ question #3, above):

• 🔹 The Chinese Notebook by Ron Silliman — a book of poetry dealing with the form and subject matter of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations (would not be accepted because it does not have an interactive component)

• 🔹 The Library of Babel by Jonathan Basile — a website that brings Jose Luis Borges’ short story “The Library of Babel” to life (would not be accepted because its primary source is a work of literature by a fiction author)

• 🔹 Zong! by M. NourbeSe Philip — a book of poetry that wrenches the voices of the black men and women aboard the slave ship Zong from the legal decision that is the only testament to their massacre (would not be accepted because its primary source is the text of Gregson v. Gilbert, a legal document)

• 🔹 The Strangerer by Mickle Maher — a play that splices together Camus’ The Stranger and the 2000 United States presidential election (would not be accepted because it does not have an interactive component)

• 🔹 FICT.site — a group of academics who create and investigate artifacts from speculative timelines as a means of understanding the effects of European colonialism (would not be accepted because it is an academic practice; having said that, individual artifacts produced within this framework would be accepted were they to take a work of philosophy as their point of departure) 

If you’re unsure whether your project would qualify for this competition, please feel free to shoot us an email at critcreaphil [at] gmail [dot] com prior to the submission deadline. We’re happy to clear your project or to point you in the right direction.

5. Who can submit a piece to this jam?

Anyone. We particularly encourage submissions from persons without permanent academic positions, such as graduate students, postgraduates, and independent researchers, regardless of their field. You do not need an institutional affiliation to submit a piece to this jam, nor do you need to be involved in academia.

6. What should I include with my submission?

Submissions should include your piece, a short description that reflects upon what it’s doing, and a link to a document that lists any relevant references and sources. We also ask that you tell us a bit about who you are. Please see our Rules for additional information about citations.

7. What works of philosophy are eligible as my primary sources for this jam?

Any work by any canonical philosopher from any philosophical tradition is eligible, provided the philosopher in question is no longer alive. Please feel free to shoot us an email if you’re worried about the eligibility of the work(s) you’ve chosen at critcreaphil [at] gmail [dot] com.

We emphasize that your piece should not be about the life of a particular philosopher (ex., we would not accept a piece like 88 Constellations for Wittgenstein (to be played with the Left Hand) by David Clark — according to Clark, this piece is a metabiography).

8. What if I want to make a piece that deals with a particular philosophical problem, as opposed to a philosophical work?

You’re welcome to do so provided the piece is grounded in at least one work that fits the specifications set out in FAQ #7, above.

9. My piece deals with a work of philosophy that is also a work of art (ex., a novel by Simone de Beauvoir). Can I submit it to this competition? 

 Yes — but we urge you to clear it with us in advance, particularly if it is in the “philosophical novel” genre; is not written by a philosopher; or is predominantly discussed in literature departments (ex., Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which falls under all three categories).

10. I’ve never done this in my life and have no idea where to start.

Check out the examples mentioned throughout this FAQ, poke around our Resources, and scroll through our Twitter feed to see what catches your eye and if there’s someone in the likes/comments/retweets you might like to connect with. We also encourage you to chat with other participants in the Community tab forum on our itch.io page. We’re also available via email.

11. I have more questions!

Please email us at critcreaphil [at] gmail [dot] com or post your question to the extended FAQ topic in the Community tab on the jam’s itch.io site.