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, and multi-instrumentalist (violin, cello, voice, piano, and bamboo flute) whose work engages with the human condition, examining how individuals and collectives navigate uncertainty, constraint, participation, and transformation amid the tensions produced by contemporary technological and socio-cultural conditions. Working across sound, live performance, multimedia, and visual art, her practice emphasizes improvisation and real-time audiovisual performance as sites of embodied, time-based practice, experimentation, and collective experience.

Her current research interests include the ethical dilemmas surrounding artificial intelligence (AI), artificial general intelligence (AGI), transhumanism, and human–machine integration, with particular attention to how these technologies are reshaping human behavior, human relations, and evolving notions of humanity. Rather than advancing deterministic or evaluative narratives of technological progress, she approaches these changes as processes to be observed and examined, selectively employing AI as a tool while critically reflecting on their social, cultural, and affective dimensions.

Suhr is the author of Social Media and Music: The Digital Field of Cultural Production (Peter Lang) and Evaluation and Credentialing in Digital Music Communities (MIT Press), and the editor and a contributing author of Online Evaluation of Creativity and the Arts (Routledge). She was also a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning award, which supported her research on digital evaluation and creativity and resulted in the latter two publications.

Her creative work includes live music and audiovisual performances as well as exhibitions of multimedia and visual art, presented nationally and internationally at venues and festivals such as ACM International Conference on Multimedia, the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), New York City Electro-Acoustic Music Festival (NYCEMF), Splice Festival, SEAMUS (The Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States), New Music on the Bayou Festival, Mi-sen Music Festival, MoXonic Festival, Performing Media Festival, EMM (Electronic Music Midwest), Australasian Computer Music Conference (ACMC), MANTIS Festival, TENOR Conference, Audio Mostly, ACM Multimedia, the New Music Gathering, among others.

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)