Eve Pollock - Zenosyne

Zenosyne comes from a series of short clips based around the concept of providing words, along with a definition and multiple examples, for those unexplainable moments and feelings that we experience throughout our lives. Zenosyne describes an overwhelming feeling of time moving continuously faster and faster each year. It’s an experience that a lot of people seem to have throughout their lifetimes, and can be a legitimate, ever-present fear for others. The relatively brief three-minute video first provides and defines the word “zenosyne”, which can’t actually be found in any sort of credible dictionary; it’s a made-up term for The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, a Youtube series. After having been explained with a few select, meaningful terms, the video takes the viewer through a very wide variety of clips from birthday parties. People ages one to one-hundred are featured celebrating their date of birth at different points throughout their lives. The narrator’s tone changes, along with the pace of the music and the flashing of birthday scenes, as the candles on the cakes continue to increase in number. These techniques perfectly mimic the message behind the video, and I think that the word zenosyne could not have been more accurately explained. Using the video pace as a metaphor for the passage of time, as we perceive it to be in reality, made everything so much easier to comprehend. The message really spoke for itself. If I were to take anything away from the short film Zenosyne, it would be to make each year count. Even if they do seem to be flying by at a ridiculous pace, I’ll want to at least take solace in the fact that I lived in every moment, I took the most out of each day.