Otto Sidharta finished his post-graduate study in composition and electronic music composition at Sweelinck Conservatorium in Amsterdam under the guidance of Professor Ton de Leeuw, and later on he gained his doctoral degree at Institute Seni Indonesia Surakarta.
He performed his first electronic music piece, Kemelut, based on water sounds in the First Indonesian Young Composer Festival (Pekan Komponis Muda) in 1979.
In 1979 he collected some nature and animal sounds on Nias, in the Borneo (Kalimantan) jungle, Riau islands, and some other remote places such as Banten, Kajang and Papua.
These sounds were used as material for some of his works such as Ngendau, Hutan Plastik and East wind, Nature, Saluang, Kajang.
For Supplement/Upstream, Sidharta created Wind of trade, a soundscape based on the sounds and voices associated with old Dutch and Indonesian culture, such as sounds from nature, markets, street vendors, trains, ships and children playing.