The University of Alabama’s CAR Show took place on April 16. Hosted by the College of Communication and Information Sciences, the CAR show stands for Creative Activity and Research Show, and gave students and faculty a chance to display their research projects and their creative work.
Students Ever Wood and Aurelius Sutter presented their “Fauna and Folklore” research.
The group’s research proposal is on the connection between the human imagination and stories, and how they can build communities.
“My research is about cryptids and monstrosity, but our general research is flora and fauna,” Sutter said.
The team’s creative project allowed them to explore how the natural world can relate to community building.
“The idea is that even monstrous things are opportunities for humans to find community and space around each other. I’d say the real creatures are a similar appreciation of the natural world and our kinship with it,” Wood said.
On their table, some cryptids that were displayed were the Loch Ness monster and the Loveland Frogman.
With it being the first year of the CAR Show, it gave these students an opportunity to showcase their both traditional and non-traditional research.
“A lot of these sort of new, contemporary methods of research don’t really have the space in academia to present what they come up with. So that’s what this opportunity is for, and to get the word out about niche things underclassmen can be doing,” Sutter said.
Another project involved combining technology and communication. Emilee Boster created the new student organization called Tide Tech Comms. The organization was created to promote social media, communications efforts, and more.
“I’ve been working with UA space for two years, so it’s been a two-year project and then putting it together. So, a few days combined, all my thoughts, all my research, put into one poster,” Boster said.
This research project is unique in that it combines work from both the College of Engineering and the College of Communication and Information Sciences.
“I was always interested in technology and communications and their overlap, so I joined it from that angle, and we ended up growing to a team of 12 people in a couple of years. We did a complete redesign, and UASPACE rebrand,” Boster said.
Another project was a student film produced by filmmaker Nicholas Taylor.
“It took two and a half weeks with the pre-production, and then three days for production, and then probably another month just for editing so and it still was a final draft,” Taylor said.
The filming process was not easy, as it took a lot of writing, shooting, and preparation.
“But as far as pre-production, we had to go back very quickly and find the actors that we needed for three actors. We had to find locations and make sure that we had everything squared away,” Taylor said.
The film is about a man who is preparing for a date but then gets trapped within a silent film. The film crew had around 10-15 people on the set, and they filmed in a local area in Northport.
“It is about a camp for hearing or visually impaired children, that happens on the grounds of Helen Keller’s birthplace,” Ceaser said.
The camp takes tours around town to see what Helen Keller’s life was like. The camp called Camp Courage had around 15 kids, and was a 3-day program for students in the 4th, 5th, and 6th grade.
“The hardest part is researching your topic and understanding your topic before you even reach out to anybody to do it,” Ceaser said.
Jada made sure to familiarize herself with the students before filming because she wanted them to feel comfortable around here.
“It can be scary for kids to be followed with a camera all weekend, so we wanted to make sure they were comfortable with me and my crew before we even got there,” Ceaser said.
Jada wanted to be conscious that she is covering for a community that she is not part of and wanted to ensure that she is doing it with respect.
“I’m not hearing impaired, I’m not visually impaired, so I want to make sure that I’m accurately representing their experiences and making sure that I’m handling their stories delicately when it comes down to the editing of the piece,” Ceaser said.
All of the presenters research and projects is a testament to the college’s desire to support research and allow for students to explore their passions.
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