Cecilia Suhr is an intermedia artist, multimedia composer, multi-instrumentalist (violin, cello, piano, bamboo flute, and voice), visual artist, and researcher. Her academic career began with research into the impact of social media on musicians and evaluation, which she explored in her first book, "Social Media and Music: The Digital Field of Cultural Production." (Peter Lang). The MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media and Learning Research Grant Award funded her subsequent research, which resulted in the publications "Evaluation and Credentialing in Digital Music Communities" (MIT Press) and "Online Evaluation of Creative Arts" (Ed., Routledge Press).
After receiving tenure, she primarily focused her research on interdisciplinary creative practices. During these periods, she experimented with a variety of visual arts mediums, such as paintings, video, digital art, mixed media, and augmented reality art. As a visual artist, she has received the Saint Michael Achievement Medal from the International Juried Fine Arts Competition (2013), an 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 for the Juried Exhibition at Pop Revolution Gallery in Mason, OH (2015), and a Special Recognition Award from the International Abstracts Art Competition at Light Space & Time Online.
She has shown her work in galleries, biennials, museums, and conferences throughout the United States and around the world. During this time, she broadened her creative experiments by incorporating an interactive component into her work. She also began performing music alongside her interactive video installation, inviting audience participation as part of the intermedia performance. As a multimedia composer and multi-instrumentalist, she has won the Pauline Oliveros Award from the International Alliance of Women in Music (2022), the American Prize (2022) "Honorable Mention" for the Virtual Performance Category (community division), the Bronze Medal Winner from the Global Music Awards (2022), the Silver Medal Award from the International Cambridge Music Competition (2023), and the Second Prize Winner (no first winner announced) in Violin Performance/Orig Her one-of-a-kind intermedia performance also received the Broadcast Education Association's Best of Competition Award in Interactive Media and Emerging Technologies at the Festival of Media Arts Competition (2023). She was also one of two artists from the United States chosen for the 2022 Asia Culture Center International Residency Award in Gwangju, Korea, but she had to decline due to scheduling conflicts at her university. She received Miami University Regional's Faculty Achievement in Scholarship and Artistic Distinction Award in 2021.
Her multimedia composition and performance 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), Electronic Music Midwest Festival (EMM), Australasian Computer Music Conference (ACMC), Mantis Festival, 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, Tenor Conference, New Music on the Bayou Festival, ACM International Conference on Multimedia, Harvard University, Yale University, International Conference/Festival of Music, Technology & Ideas, Music Diaries Festival, Klingt Gut International Symposium on Sonic Art and Spatial Audio, among others. In 2024, she was promoted to full professor of media studies and intermedia performance at Miami University Regionals in Ohio.
