Sam Balfus, alias Balfua (Los Angeles, 1994), is interested in creating possibilities that arise from granting each shape and construction a specific language. A specific way of being, emerging with its flavor, personality, and psychology.
He’s always drawn and been near epic and fantastic magical sagas, in high school he was into graffiti and freestyling. At SAIC he was introduced to new media (3D software, 3D printers, virtual reality, video games, etc.), where, between 2013 and 2016, he carried out a series of multimedia performances. In them, he played music, performed guided meditations, and used self-designed programs to display art that reacted to the sound of his voice. Around that time, he started to use the word sayssi to refer to all of these riff creatures that were emerging.
Tsyggliu (2021) shows us a little piece of Sayssiworld, the artist’s digital spirit word where things and events are, in his words, inexplicable. Or if one may say, specifically activated and highly designed by Balfua. The word is inhabited by slollas [slah-luhz],vavvas, vybanthers, and zhinxes. They are all sentient creatures, each communicating a unique feeling, so their integration and unity is vital.
The name of the work comes from the Sayssi language itself, it’s the name of the slolla that twists and turns at the center. In the image, the world is twisting and undulating around the slolla, in response to the slolla’s song. Because the slollas are their own language, and each has a different emotion, they interact with the Sayssiworld in different ways.
The Sayssiworld exists within a universe called Gooniverse. Created together with Znzn Kanshan Gang, a group of friends that work together making up lore and mythology, they release “packets”, which can contain anything from recorded LP’s to art installations.
Tsyggliu launch on Aura, one of his first tokenized pieces, is an opportunity to engage and intertwine oneself with another world that carries a specific sensibility, emotion, and vibration.
L. Nielsen — Aura Editorial
