H. Cecilia Suhr

Education and Background

• Ph.D., Media Studies, Rutgers University
• M.A., Media Ecology, New York University
• B.A., English, Minor in Music, James Madison University
• Certificate of Completion in Audio-Visual Practices at CCRMA, Stanford University

 

Cecilia Suhr is an award-winning intermedia artist, researcher, multi-instrumentalist (violin, cello, voice, piano, and bamboo flute), multimedia composer, painter, visual artist, and improviser whose work explores the evolving relationship between humans and emerging technology. Working across analog performance, digital media, computer music, and visual art, she examines how technological tools—including AI as a cultural, aesthetic, and improvisational force—influence creativity and embodied expression. Her research-driven creative practice focuses on human–machine interaction within broader social, cultural, and technological contexts. Her research interests include human–AI improvisation and real-time audio processing systems in which AI-driven tools respond to her live musical gestures, extending her improvisational practice into new technological terrains. She also investigates transhumanism and human–machine tension as conceptual frameworks for understanding the frictions and dualities embedded in lived human experience. Through audiovisual experimentation, she reveals both the expanded capacities enabled by technological mediation and the constraints that shape contemporary creative practice.

Her publications include two sole-authored scholarly books—Social Media and Music: The Digital Field of Cultural Production (Peter Lang) and Evaluation and Credentialing in Digital Music Communities (MIT Press)—as well as the edited volume Online Evaluation of Creativity and the Arts (Routledge), in addition to numerous peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and conference papers.

Her creative work—spanning sound, performance, digital media, and visual arts—has been featured nationally and internationally at the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), New York City Electro-Acoustic Music Festival (NYCEMF), SEAMUS, SCI, Electronic Music Midwest (EMM), Australasian Computer Music Conference (ACMC), MANTIS Festival, International Multimedia Arts Festival, New Music Gathering, Splice Festival, Moxonic Festival, Beast Feast, Irish Sound, Science & Technology Association, Ammerman Center Biennial Symposium, Performing Media Arts Festival, Oh My Ear Festival, iDMAa, Audio Mostly Conference, TENOR Conference, ACM Multimedia, Harvard University, Yale University, and many more. She has also exhibited nationally and internationally across new media art, digital art, and mixed media painting, an earlier practice that now informs the audiovisual fixed-media and performance work central to her intermedia approach.

Selected Awards and Honor

• Finalist Honor, the 4th Petrichor International Music Competition (2025)
• Bronze Medal Winner, Global Music Awards (2025)
• The American Prize , Virtual Performance, Honorable Mention (2023)
• Best of Competition Winner, Interactive Multimedia, Broadcast Education Association (2023)
• Silver Medal, International Cambridge Music Competition (2023)
• Second Prize, Violin Performance/Original Composition, American International Music Competition (2023)
• Bronze Medal Winner, Global Music Awards (2022)
• Winner, Pauline Oliveros Prize, International Alliance for Women in Music (2022)
• Faculty Achievement in Scholarship and Artistic Distinction, Miami University (2021)
• Honorable Mention in Mixed Media Category, New York City International Fine Art Contest held by Gateway Art Center NYC, (2016)
• People’s Choice Award, Juried Exhibition, Pop Revolution Gallery, Mason, OH (2015)
• An International Juried Fine Arts Exhibition, NY Realism, Saint Michael Special Achievement Medal (2013)
• Special Recognition Award, International Abstracts Art Competition, Light Space & Time Online Art Gallery, Digital Art, (2012)
• MacArthur Foundation, Digital Media and Learning Research Grant Award (2012)