VolumetricCondensed

Carla Scaletti

Co-founder

Symbolic Sound

About Me

Co-founder of Symbolic Sound Corporation (https://kyma.symbolicsound.com/), Carla Scaletti is the creator of the Kyma language, a sound design environment used extensively in film, games, music, and scientific research.
In addition to her work as a software developer, Scaletti composes experimental electronic music for live performance, contemporary dance, and virtual reality. Since 1990, she has been one of the pioneers helping to establish the field of data sonification: using sound to explore, interpret, and communicate complex scientific data.
At the University of Illinois, she earned a doctorate in music composition with a minor in psychoacoustics, alongside a master's degree in computer science. Among her composition professors was Salvatore Martirano, creator of the hybrid digital-analog composing machine known as the Sal-Mar Construction (https://distributedmuseum.illinois.edu/exhibit/sal-mar_construction). Her computer science advisor, Ralph Johnson, was one of the "Gang of Four" who revolutionized software development with their book on design patterns for object-oriented programming (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_Patterns).
During her time as a graduate student and post-doctoral researcher at the University of Illinois, Dr. Scaletti was a member of the CERL Sound Group, where she collaborated with a group of fellow students who would go on to notable careers in audio signal processing, among them:
• Kurt J. Hebel: Co-founder of Symbolic Sound and designer of Kyma's audio processing units.
• Lippold Haken: Founder of Haken Audio and inventor of the Continuum Fingerboard.
• Charlie Q. Robinson: Dolby researcher and winner of a 2024 technical Oscar for the Atmos audio format.
• Kelly Fitz: Principal DSP Algorithm Engineer at Eargo.com and developer of the Loris open source sound modeling & processing software
• Richard G. Baraniuk: Rice University Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Founder of the open education initiative OpenStax
Explore more of her work at https://carlascaletti.com

Sessions

  • Keynote: Sonic Cartography

    Navigating the Abstract Space-Time of Sound
    16:20 - 17:20 UTC | Wednesday 13th November 2024 | Bristol 2Bristol 1Bristol 3
    Beginner
    Intermediate
    Advanced

    From the chemotaxis of single-celled organisms to human exploration of the solar system, it seems that terrestrial brains are exquisitely tuned for navigating in 3-d space. There is evidence that we use our navigation brains, by way of conceptual metaphors, to reason about even the most abstract concepts. But what about when that space is infinite? How do we navigate within a virtual space that does not even exist until we generate it? This is the domain that audio developers inhabit and explore on a routine basis. And we’ve developed strategies that have analogs in biological evolution, anthropology, physics and […]