Win, Lose, or Rebus


I created a game-show style video to demonstrate the rebus principle.

In Egyptian history, objects or beings were depicted by hieroglyphics, a picture writing system retained by the Egyptians for nearly three and a half thousand years. These pictograms were combined to convey thoughts and ideas. However, when Egyptian scribes needed to communicate words that were difficult to express, they created a rebus.

In this principle, pictures are used to translate the sounds and syllables of the word to be communicated. The following is an example of a rebus; a picture of a burrito, a picture of knees, and separate pictures of soup, and ears. When sounded out, this creates the sound of bureeto-knees soup-ears, with the intention to eventually sound like Britney Spears. In addition, the choice of writing direction was flexible for hieroglyphics, which allows the rebus to be displayed in the vertical arrangement shown in the video.

A modern approach to this historical Egyptian principle was created with the Win, Lose, or Rebus video. Although this example was not carved into stone, the underlying principles of creating a rebus is shown by the video.

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