About
DDS
Darkness Duo Studios is work and play rolled into a father and son team — Deepak and Ezra Khemchandani, scholars to our imagination and artistic expression, we fuel each other’s wild and often ridiculous ideas with boundless optimism to explore, attempt, fail, learn, experience and evolve.
We dive headfirst into the creative chaos of...
writing and illustrating absurd yet meaningful comics and graphic novels;
mashing up videos and music;
discovering new uncertainties from essential questions about definitions, benchmarks and incentives;
balancing behaviourial science frameworks, ethical engagement economics, gamification strategies;
playing in-real-life (analogue) and cross-platform (digital) games for the sake of playing (while we do quite enjoy winning);
and improving social understanding, decency and culture.
Every project is an opportunity to ignite our divine spark,
esteem our skills and create enduring art ☯
It was January 2021 when we were brainstorming names for our creative enterprise while driving back to the city from a hiking trip to Warrumbungle National Park in New South Wales, Australia, an extinct volcano complex and one of the darkest places in the world.
As we observed the cosmos in this celestial sanctuary, we talked about how the vast sky, brimming with stars glittering in their wonder, needs the (evolutionarily programmed for our safety and survival) "spooky and frightening" dark to be truly appreciated.
Uno
Deepak loves technology while secretly despising it. More precisely, he interprets observed patterns across a range of personal interests and professional research areas, including dis/mis/mal-information, censorship, tax havens, spyware, geopolitics, refugees, financial literacy, economics, law, psychology, education, media, computing, philosophy, game design, privacy, geoeconomics, artificial intelligence, quantum theory and cybersecurity to name but a few. He is particularly curious about the evolution of the media environment, analysing public policy, evaluating the role of anarchy in shaping harmony, navigating the technological incursion upon our mental sovereignty, and understanding the objective function of the education system in the digital age.
As some of his interests may be perceived by authoritarian regimes and fooled (as opposed to full) democracies as "anarchical", albeit, a constructive enquiry of quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (~who watches the watchers?), he spends his time channelling insights attained to critique by creating — a media curation tool that builds our muscle of enquiry to review the news, advance critical thinking, collective sense-making and democratic will formation; and dark comics and graphic novels that tackle social issues.
When he's not minding the belligerent parens patriae's (~parents of the country) policies; discerning signal from noise through a resolute focus on outcomes (reality) over narratives (doublespeak apparatuses' mind-f*ckery designed for slumbering causality-seeking meat machines); or dreaming up a pareto-improving new world of realigned parasitic industrial complexes, he's in his happy place hanging out with his family of goofballs.
Duo
Ezra loves making stuff, playing games and being a goofball!
A world view about a decade in the making which draws inspiration from comics, books and movies like The Legend of Zelda, Harry Potter, Captain Underpants, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Space Jam, Back To The Future, The Karate Kid, Matrix; the profound genius of Studio Ghibli classics like Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle and My Neighbor Totoro; games across numerous platforms and made by developers across the spectrum, ranging in complexity from industry titans like Nintendo, Supercell, Epic Games and Mojang Studios – Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Brawl Stars, Minecraft and Roblox; to simpler, kinetic or social deduction and quirky indie creations – Doodle Jump by Lima Sky, Among Us by Innersloth and an all-time favourite, Machinarium by Amanita Design.
When he’s not making the real world his playground or doing good research in the aforementioned domains, he spends a large part of his time at the institution of school, which aims to prepare him for "the future" — and where he aims to establish a more concise definition of what this future looks / ought to look like.