Playin'Rebus:enigmatic audiovisual experimentations

Etymologycally “Rebus” is a latin word that stands for “by things”, from the term res that means thing, matter; it was ufficially codified by the domain of italian Enigmistica in the twentieth Century, but it has a long tradition that intersects the history of visual communication and the history of art . On a general level it consists in a riddle or a puzzle made up of letters, pictures, and symbols whose names sound like the syllables and words of a phrase or sentence. Inspired by some experimentations of Surrealism and from the italian tradition of visual poetry, we propose here a series of Rebuses that were realized with students from the undergraduate Degree Course in Communication Design (Politecnico di Milano, Studio based course in Visual Elements for communication design projects, C2). These works consist in short videos with a dreamlike atmosphere ; their structure recalls the idea of “domino effect” (a chain reaction that occurs when a small change causes a similar change nearby, which then will cause another similar change, and so on in linear sequence), the sound supports the interpretation of the rebus beyond images and numerical diagrams. The play of “rebus” has a reflexive and metalinguistic dimension that is useful in the process of learning graphic design basics. It has given us the possibility to explore:- the logical connections between images and text in a diachronic composition ;- the process of composition and stratification of the elements;- the juxtaposition of the layers;- the reading orders of images and text elements; - the accessibility to the solution (through the role of numerical diagrams);- the process of semantic and symbolic interpretation;- the integration of sound and images.