INFANT: BANNED SKILLS

BANNED SKILLS is a nonlinear narrative by the artist duo INFANT, sidony o'neal and Bogosi Sekhukhuni. The artists have designed an experience that serves as a portal into their evolving conceptual framework of XENOFORMALISM (XF). The work offers an aesthetic approach to new understandings of cultural representations, using histories of science fiction and digital culture (gaming, computer graphics) as speculative starting points. The work unfolds along two distinct paths using the psychological phenomenon of the bouba-kiki effect as a primary navigation tool for encountering the XF style. First proposed in the 1920s, the bouba-kiki phenomenon reflects non-arbitrary associations between speech sounds and visual shapes: people associate the word bouba with smooth, rounded shapes and kiki with sharp, angular ones. Within BANNED SKILLS, users choose the bouba or kiki forms, both housed in a "NEST," to take different paths through the experience. They encounter a range of artifacts—from the Gameboy Advanced SP Tribal Edition to the meticulously shaped bones of a whale forming a necklace—that INFANT has combined to yield unexpected connections. In the upper lefthand corner of the screen, there is an interactive virtual music device that allows users to switch between kiki- and bouba-coded audio landscapes, which in turn emphasizes visual juxtapositions. BANNED SKILLS' branching sequences encourage viewers to rethink how meaning is formed and reinforced within art, art history, design, science, science fiction, and how these disciplines and genres contribute to collective cultural memory.