Caillois's linking of gaming and culture is predicated upon Huizinga's thesis that "culture is derived from play," which has always been an important form/force of invention (58). Furthermore, games as such occur only within the pure space of play; the spatial and temporal boundaries of play separate it from the pressures, obligations, and stakes of "ordinary life." These restrictions enable the players to partake in the logic of potlatch and gift economy: "Play is an occasion of pure waste [of time, energy, skill, etc.]" (5).
One way to conceive of our perspective work with Prezi is to see this phase of the project as a pure space of play, in the sense elaborated by Caillois. Not to say that it is a waste of time, of course, but to say that the fatal strategies of our consultant's report embrace waste: our method experiments with modes of thought/expression that run contra to those deemed "useful" by conventional consulting practices, and we are also making it a point to notice the waste evident in our accident.
Moreover, in defining his game catagories, Caillois description of mimicry and ilinx seem especially applicable to our work with Prezi. Particularly his claim that, "Mimicry is incessant invention...it consists in the actor's fascinating the spectator" and his claim about the seductive appeal of ilinx, "which consist[s] of an attempt to momentarily destroy the stability of perception and inflict a kind of voluptuous panic upon an otherwise lucid mind" (23). In our case the role/agency of actor is replaced by the fatality of the object. We can also think about the cinematic movements of Prezi as a kind of ilinx-generating machine (Caillois points out that the speedy machinery of the Industrial Revolution were crucial to the development of ilinx games).
If we do approach our Prezi reports as a space of pure play (invention in spite of--or by virtue of--waste), then, for framing purposes, we can appeal back to Baudrillard's comment about the relationship between fiction and reality: "Somehow, whatever happens on the level of pure appearance of the tale always impinges on the real" (169). Play-as-consulting does not solve the accident but playing with the accident affects our perception/conception of it, enables us to see it differently, and possibly introduces something new/unthought into processes of deliberative reasoning and policy formation concerning the accident.
