Peter Otto: Advanced audio for immersive and collaborative environments

ABSTRACT: 

This talk will examine current research activities of the Sonic Arts Research and Development group at UCSD's CalIT2, in collaboration with CRCA and UCSD Music. Topics addressed will include graphics-driven audio for Music, VR and sonification, with examples and demonstrations of techniques employed in KAUST and CalIT2 visualization and spatial audio laboratories. New techniques in 3D audio imaging using binaural and array techniques will be presented. Ongoing research in collaborative audio for cinema post-production will be described. 

ABOUT PETER OTTO:

Peter Otto is an expert in the language and aesthetics of musical and media expression, and also accomplished in advanced hardware/software design and engineering, including instrumentation and facilities design, systems and networking applications, and a wide array of media technology research and development areas. Classically trained in musical performance and composition, he completed his graduate work at California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles in 1984, and continued there on faculty for several years.  His vitae includes long associations with seminal figures Morton Subotnick and Luciano Berio, as well as studies and collaborations with Pulitzer Prize winners Mel Powell and Roger Reynolds. He currently holds appointments at UCSD as Technology Director on the Faculty of Music and as Director of Research & Development in the Sonic Arts initiative at UCSD's CalIT2, established in 2009. As an educator he is a founding faculty member and advisor to UCSD Music's highly regarded Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts Major (ICAM), a program which has produced top performers in the nation's most advanced digital media industries and leading universities. As a hardware designer he invented the first digital audio workstation control surface (Waveframe's Contact MIDI Panel), designed the hardware-based spatial audio system TRAILS, and is currently designing audio systems for CalIT2 (StarCave, HiperWall and other systems). Audio and music facility credits include CalIT2's Spatial Audio Lab (Spatlab) and collaborative designs for CalIT2's Black Box and Digital Cinema Theatres, and new systems and studios at UCSD Music's new Prebys Music Center (Experimental Theatre and other systems). Other design work includes advanced research projects in high-definition multi-channel audio streaming and production systems, most notably for CineGrid, a networked ultra-high-definition digital cinema R&D consortium.  Research sponsors include SkySound (LucasArts), Qualcomm, Inc., Cisco, Meyer Sound Labs, National Institutes of Health, HMC Architects, CineGrid, Walt Disney Productions, NTT, and others. In software design, Otto has written software for diverse applications in multi-channel and spatial audio, including binaural and multi-channel sound design environments and utilities, and a variety of spatial audio imaging packages. An entrepreneur, he has founded two software companies and consulted for top tier firms in the private sector. His performance design work has been heard in major American, European and Asian venues such as Carnegie Hall, Juilliard, Los Angeles Philharmonic, SIGGRAPH, Theatre Olympics (Japan), Holland Festival, Foundation Maecht (Fr.), Santa Cecilia (Italy), Barbican and Royal Albert Halls (London), Ars Electronica (Austria), and many others.