Cecilia Suhr is an intermedia artist and researcher, multi-instrumentalist (violin/cello/voice/piano/bamboo flute), multimedia composer, interaction designer, painter, author, and improviser. She has won multiple awards in the field of visual art, music, interactive media, and academic research, including the MacArthur Foundation, Digital Media and Learning Research Grant Award (2012), Pauline Oliveros Award from the International Alliance from Women in Music (2022), American Prize (2022) for Virtual Performance currently under review as a "semi-finalist," (community div) Silver Medal Award from the International Cambridge Music Competition (2023), Bronze Medal Winner from the Global Music Awards (2022), Best of Competition Winner in Interactive Media and Emerging Technologies from the Broadcast Education Association, Festival of Media Arts Competition (2023), Saint Michael Achievement Medal from International Juried Fine Arts Competition, (2013), Honorable Mention in the Mixed Media Category from the New York City International Fine Art Contest held by Gateway Art Center NYC (2016), a People’s Choice Award, Juried Exhibition, Pop Revolution Gallery, Mason, OH (2015), Special Recognition Award from the International Abstracts Art Competition, Light Space & Time Online Art Gallery (2012). She was also selected for the 2022 Asia Culture Center (Gwangju, Korea) International Residency Award (had to decline due to timing). In 2021, she received Faculty Achievement in Scholarship and Artistic Distinction Award at Miami University Regional. OH.
Crossing the boundaries between audience and performer, vision and sound, motion and stasis, digital and analog, seen and unseen reality, Cecilia's improvisational performance on the violin, cello, piano and bamboo flute and voice often interacts with live electronics and video or fixed media. She often invites audiences’ participation as a part of live performances to heighten audiences’ intimate and embodied experience while honoring unity and collective bonding. So far, her intermedia performance works incorporate interactive techniques such as face-tracking, color tracking and drawing with sound to create a unique audio-visual experience. She also carefully designs human focused interactions along with the art installation/camera installation. Overall, her creative practice yields a unique combination of various mediums such as performance art, movement, video, installation, while an experimental comprovisation/improvisation in an electro-acoustic style of music is the central element that anchors all mediums.
Her creative work has been featured nationally and internationally at the New York City Electro-Acoustic Festival (NYCEMF), International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), The Society of Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS), Society of Composers (SCI), International Multimedia Arts Festival, New Music Gathering, Turn Up Festival, Splice Festival, Hot Air Music Festival, Moxonic Festival, Beast Feast, Irish Sound, Science & Technology Association, Ammerman Center Biennial Symposium, Performing Media Arts Festival, Festival of Contemporary Art Music, Oh My Ear Festival, iDMAa, Audio Mostly Conference, ACM International Conference on Multimedia, IEEE Games, Entertainment and Media Conference, Convergence, International Conference/Festival of Music, Technology & Ideas, Music Diaries Festival, Klingt Gut International Symposium on Sonic Art and Spatial Audio, CICA Museum, IANG Gallery, Pensacola Museum of Art, Outside the Box Biennial, Artech: International Conference on Digital and Interactive Arts, National Associations of Composers, ELO Conference and Media Arts Festival, etc.
Her work has been publicly collected by the Marina Tsvetaeva House Museum in Moscow, IANG Gallery, NamSeoul University (permanent collection), Sisters of St. Paul of Charities, and KT Korea.
As a researcher, she is the author of Social Media and Music: The Digital Field of Cultural Production (2012, Peter Lang Press) and Evaluation and Credentialing in Digital Music Communities (MIT Press, 2014). She also served as an editor and contributing author to Online Evaluation of Creative Arts (Routledge Press, 2014). Her articles have appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as Critical Arts, New Media and Society, International Journal of the Humanities, International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics, Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge, ACM conference proceedings, etc.
She holds an M.A. from New York University in Media Ecology, a Ph.D. from Rutgers University in Media Studies, and a certificate of completion in audio-visual practice from the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics at Stanford University. She is currently an Associate Professor of Humanities and Creative Arts and an Affiliate Professor of Art at Miami University Regionals, Ohio.
