Cecilia Suhr is an award-winning intermedia composer-performer whose work integrates multi-instrumental performance, electroacoustic composition, and live-processed visual media into immersive audiovisual environments. Conceived as a “One-Body Orchestra,” she performs across violin, cello, piano, bamboo flute, and soprano voice, constructing layered, real-time systems that synthesize live processing with visual art.

Suhr’s work functions as a critical inquiry into the human condition within a technologically mediated world. Her practice reflects on how emerging systems—including AI—reconfigure dimensions of affect, identity, and culture. Through embodied human–machine interaction, she investigates the social and psychological shifts of contemporary life, reaching toward deeper, visceral currents of lived experience to explore how perception and relationality are transformed today.

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Her work has been presented nationally and internationally at ICMC, NYCEMF, SEAMUS, New Music on the Bayou, ACMC, TENOR, SCI, CMS/ATMI, the MANTIS Festival, the Oh My Ears Festival, New Music Gathering, the Performing Media Festival, the Napoleon Electronic Media Festival, the Splice Festival, the MoXonic Festival, the 22nd Biennial Festival of New Music, and the Mise-En Festival, among others.

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Suhr has received international recognition across composition, performance, multimedia, visual art, and interdisciplinary scholarship. Recent honors include Finalist Honors at the 4th Petrichor International Music Competition (2025), Bronze Medals from the Global Music Awards (2025, 2022), the Silver Medal at the International Cambridge Music Competition (2023), Second Prize in Violin Performance and Original Composition at the American International Music Competition (2023), Honorable Mention in Virtual Performance from The American Prize (2023), and the Best of Competition Award in Interactive Multimedia from the Broadcast Education Association (2023). Her work was also recognized with the Pauline Oliveros Prize from the International Alliance for Women in Music (2022), Faculty Achievement in Scholarship and Artistic Distinction at Miami University (2021), and awards in visual and fine arts including Honorable Mention in Mixed Media at the New York City International Fine Art Contest, the People’s Choice Award at Pop Revolution Gallery, the Saint Michael Special Achievement Medal at NY Realism, and the Special Recognition Award in Digital Art from Light Space & Time.

As a scholar, Suhr’s research has additionally been recognized through the MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Research Grant Award (2012).

 

She 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 editor of "Online Evaluation of Creativity and the Arts" (Routledge).

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She currently serves as Full Professor of Media Studies and Intermedia Performance at Miami University Regionals.