Sidharta's interest using environmental sounds and synthetics sounds as well to express his musical ideas developed when he was a student at the Jakarta Institute of Arts. 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 begin to collect some nature and animal sounds on Nias Island, Borneo (Kalimantan) jungle, Riau islands, and some other emote places. These sounds were used as material for some of his works such as Ngendau, Hutan Plastik and East wind. And some others.’