WTIU members.

Thank you!

>> BRANDON: Coming up.

>> ASHLEY: Learn about an endangered species that found a home in Indiana.

>> BRANDON: Hear how an inventor reimagined a classic musical instrument.

>> ASHLEY: Step back in time at the Marktown Historic District.

>> BRANDON: And chill out at the Festival of Ice in Carmel.

>> ASHLEY: That's all on this episode of -- >> TOGETHER: "Journey Indiana."

♪ >> ASHLEY: Welcome to "Journey Indiana."

I'm Ashley Chilla.

>> BRANDON: And I'm Brandon Wentz, and we're coming to you from Dreiser Hall at Indiana State University.

>> Built in 1950, Dreiser Hall is home to the ISU Student Media program.

Students have access to a wide variety of resources, allowing them to study TV, radio, print and web production.

Dreiser Hall is also home of the Department of Theater, where students utilize the 155-seat theater to stage performances semester round.

And we'll learn all about this dynamic space in just a bit.

>> ASHLEY: But first, we're headed to Greene County to learn how the endangered whooping crane made its home in Indiana.

♪ The Goose Pond Fish and Wildlife Area in southern Indiana's Greene County is a 9,000-acre mix of prairies and wetlands.

This reclaimed farmland is home to a staggering array of wildlife.

And since its establishment in 2005, it's become an especially important refuge for migratory birds.

>> This property is unique in Indiana, because wetlands today encompass less than 4% of all habitats in Indiana.

These are really valuable wildlife habitats, as evidenced by the wildlife migration that we see every year on Goose Pond, which includes a variety of waterfowl, shore birds, marsh birds and sand hill cranes and even whooping cranes.

>> Whooping cranes.

At 5 feet tall and with a 7-foot wingspan, they are one of the most awe-inspiring birds in North America.

But perhaps even more inspiring is what it's taken for them to get here.

Once spread across the continent, loss of habitat and unregulated hunting nearly drove the cranes to extinction.

In the 1940s, there were only 20 of the birds left.

Down from a population of more than 10,000.

However, conservation efforts have brought the birds back from the brink.

While the species remains endangered, these whooping cranes are among the more than 650 in the wild today.

Though they may have ended up in Goose Pond, the cranes began their journey in southern Wisconsin, at the International Crane Foundation.

>> So the status of whooping cranes in North America is -- I think it's optimistic.

>> Kim Boardman oversees the species survival plan for the North American whooping crane.

She and her staff at the foundation manage a captive breeding program, which releases whooping cranes into wild populations across North America.

On top of traditional breeding methods, the Crane Foundation utilizes a novel costume-rearing technique, which enables staff members to care for cranes around the clock without the need for captive crane parents.

>> There's a lot of things that can go wrong, even in captivity with a pair of birds raising a chick.

And so costume rearing continues to provide those higher numbers of chicks available annually for our re-introduction goals.

>> The cranes that arrive at Goose Pond each year are part of an experimental flock.

A group of 75 cranes established by the Crane Foundation in 2001.

Back then, Indiana wasn't part of the plan.

>> So the eastern migratory population, when it first was established, the idea was that the breeding ground would be in Wisconsin, and the wintering ground would be sort of down in southeast Florida area.

But as we had more and more birds, adult birds on the landscape that were migrating on their own, they started choosing their own stopover sites, and Goose Pond in Indiana is one of those sites that a lot of our birds like to stop at.

But we've also had some that have actually chosen to over winter there.

That's as far south as they go on their migration.

And so it's been a really important area for us.

>> It's a good signal.

>> Once the Crane Foundation releases the birds into the wild, keeping track of them is crucial.

That's where Jim Brown and Dan Kaiser come in.

They are the foundation's eyes on the ground here at Goose Pond.

>> Do you hear that?

>> These volunteers drive through the wetlands weekly, tracking the cranes through GPS locators and radio collars fitted on to the birds' legs.

>> Well, during the day, a lot of them move off of the property and go out into various ag fields in the area, which there obviously are thousands and thousands of acres of corn stubble fields in the area.

So they are kind of difficult to find, needle in a haystack search out there.

>> Oh, there's four.

>> They are pretty close to the road, Dan.

So you might not want to be careful going past them.

>> Yes, we will slow down up here.

Look out there, on the other side of the road, up north.

>> We're trying to ID by the color bands on their legs.

The birds are moving around.

It can be quite confusing and difficult, especially if there's a large group together, we can spend an hour trying to identify ten birds.

>> Jim and Dan note not only the crane's location, but also any issues or injuries or even the loss of a bird.

>> After the birds are released, you know, they are still pretty naive to the wild landscape.

And so learning to navigate different predator risks, whether they are ground predators or aerial predators, as well as the human risk.

We've had some of that on county roads where birds are kind of not paying attention as they are crossing between cornfields.

We also have power line collisions is one of the big risks.

>> Despite the hurdles, the whooping crane continues to make strides in its recovery.

And for now, their continued presence at Goose Pond is a welcomed sign of things to come.

>> It's always awe-inspiring.

When I reflect back on what it took to get them here to have recovered them, it's such an investment.

And then just the idea that here in Greene County, Indiana, I can see, you know, 20% of all of them in the eastern flyway.

It's a thrill.

>> ASHLEY: Brandon, do you remember -- I mean, we have done a lot of wrap shoots at this point, but do you remember going to Goose Pond?

It was two years ago, I think we did this.

>> BRANDON: Yes, large glass window walls.

>> ASHLEY: Such a beautiful space, and it's so important what they are doing.

>> ASHLEY: Want to learn more?

Head to savingcranes.org.

>> BRANDON: Earlier, we caught up with some of the folks at Dreiser to learn all about this newly renovated space.

♪ >> Dreiser Hall is a classroom building that was built in 1950.

Recently, the state appropriated $18.4 million for the renovation of Dreiser Hall, for not only classroom space, but also learning space for student media.

One of the things that they did is they came in and they really opened up the building.

They put in new windows.

They put in a lot of glass walls or half glass walls that kind of opened up the spaces so people who are walking by can see what's going on in the building.

Which includes the Indiana Statesman Newspaper, WZIS Student Radio Station.

Students come here, they work on a campus TV station, and they also do web design and graphic design.

♪ >> Our new Dreiser Theater is a fantastic space.

It's still in the footprint of the old Dreiser Theater, but we have all kinds of new technology, which include new black box space, which we can use for acting classes, and for lighting and sound labs.

We have our main space, which is a gorgeous new space, with state-of-the-art equipment in it.

And a number of other spaces, shops, construction spaces, that really give us a great opportunity to teach in an arena that really serves the student.

♪ >> One of the biggest benefits of this building is the fact that students love it.

And they hang out and they work on classes, and they work on projects and they socialize.

You know, I think that's all part of the learning experience, is not just learning in the classroom, but also learning from fellow students.

♪ >> BRANDON: So the stage that we are standing on right now, as we film this, how many times previously have you been on this stage?

>> ASHLEY: Hundreds of hours probably.

You know, we've talked a lot about Brandon and I's connection to Indiana State.

This is actually our alma mater.

We graduated from the Department of Theater.

We knew this old space very, very well, and so to be in this newly renovated space is quite the experience.

>> BRANDON: Yes, I have been on this space as a student, as a professional, and as a faculty member here years ago.

I also need a renovation.

Want to learn more, just go to the address on your screen.

>> ASHLEY: Up next, producer Tyler Lake takes us to Monroe County to learn how a musical inventor is reimagining the synthesizer.

♪ >> This unusual instrument is called the Nova.

And it looks a lot like a guitar, which is on purpose.

For Mosi Audio creator, Stephen Moseson, form follows function, which means the Nova can sound like just about anything.

>> You can play flutes or violin, but I think it's much more suited to play synthesizers in new ways.

That's what really excites me about it.

With the standard keyboard synth, you basically have your on/off kind of.

When you play the note, you can get the velocity, but then you can't really change the sound after that.

People have added knobs and stuff and sliders, but it's not really an organic way of interacting with the sound.

So with the Nova, you have this giant touchpad in the body, and you can really kind of morph the sound in a very organic way that you can't do with other instruments.

>> The Nova can do anything that a standard MIDI keyboard -- that is, a keyboard that can play any number of sounds -- can do, but the Nova unlocks a dynamic expressiveness that you won't find on a regular keyboard.

>> So a Nova is a touchpad guitar MIDI controller.

You have a touchpad in the body, and a fretboard that's laid out the same as a guitar fretboard.

So you can play the same riffs and the same scales you can on guitar, but to be able to play these crazy sounds that you can't control with any other instrument.

>> That means any guitar player can pick it up and use the same finger board positions they are used to, but they have access to the massive library of sounds and effects that are part of most audio editing programs.

♪ >> That's a saxophone.

>> The Nova is the product of a half decade of work put in by Moseson and combines his love of music with his technical background in mechanical engineering and computer science.

>> This was kind of the perfect project.

It's got music.

It's got mechanical engineering, and it has the computer programming part of it.

That might be my favorite.

>> And as is often the case, great things come from humble beginnings.

The Nova has gone through many iterations before Moseson was ready to bring the final product to market.

>> The first prototype, it has the functionality, but it's in the craziest package.

I built a really basic guitar shaped thing, stuck a keyboard on the neck, like a computer keyboard, put a Microsoft Surface in the body, and then that let me dive into the prototyping right away.

I started kind of figuring out, okay, how is -- what are the actual parts going to look like?

How is it actually going to be -- fit together.

A lot of people think it's just, like, kind of a normal guitar body that's modified, but it's totally from scratch.

At least the shape is definitely based on the normal guitar, but, yeah, as far as how it all fits together, it's totally different.

>> Moseson designed it himself, but it's such an unusual instrument that combines so many different manufacturing techniques that it took a long time to find a company with the know-how to assemble it.

>> It's not an easy product to find manufacturers for because it combines so many different disciplines.

You have your instrument, like the instrument body, which, I mean, it's all wood, and then it's a stainless steel fretboard.

So that's not normally something that you -- the instrument manufacturers deal with.

Then you have this world of electronics that you are combining with this.

It was really tough to kind of find a manufacturer that was up for this challenge.

I've had to reach out to many different manufacturers to make these different parts, and then kind of find one that will be able to assemble it.

The guitar manufacturer makes the bodies and the necks.

The plan is that they will assemble it.

They weren't able to do the assembly during COVID.

I had them just send the first batch here.

So that's how -- that's how I ended up with this mini assembly facility in my garage.

That's how I'm doing it for this first batch.

The goal is to have them assemble everything.

This is called the Founders Series, these first ones I'm assembling here, I guess because I'm manually assembling them myself.

So I actually took a lot of the dimensions and design cues from my first electric guitar.

I wanted to feel as close as possible to playing a real guitar.

The fretboard is tapered, just like a normal guitar.

>> Even though the Nova was designed to look and feel like a guitar, Moseson says it's intended for use by musicians of all stripes.

>> This is for professional and amateur musicians, anyone who is interested in synthesizers and getting a new way of interacting with them.

It's also geared towards professional musicians playing on stage.

It definitely has a live component to it.

So it needs to be very reliable and battle tested.

That's something that sets it a bit apart from a normal keyboard synthesizer.

You can be rocking out, but you are kind of stuck behind these keys.

We all know the crazy guitar players that are jumping around on stage.

And so this lets synth players kind of be able to do that.

You can connect it with music visualizers.

So you can have kind of lights or like a projector that's, like, projecting some visualization.

It's mapped to the touchpad.

So that it actually responds to what you are doing.

So you can really integrate it into a live show.

Like very deeply.

I also see it as accompanying other instruments as well.

Like, I actually get really excited about mixing it into other genres.

Like genres, you wouldn't think as having a synth in.

So you can blend it in with classical music.

>> And despite its futuristic looks, the Nova may just be timeless, since it can be updated with new software, adding more functionality and versatility in the future.

So just like a beloved six string, the Nova will only get better with age.

>> BRANDON: I don't know how much of a video game player you are.

Did you ever play, like, Rock Band or Guitar Hero?

>> ASHLEY: Yes, I have played that.

>> BRANDON: Like, these are going to be perfect for a generation of people who can't quite get the strings, but still want to create the music.

I think they are stunning!

>> ASHLEY: Yeah, and what's really cool about it, if you understand music, you can still build pieces.

You can still sort of compose your own stuff on this, but you don't necessarily have to learn everything that there is to know about a guitar or about a piano.

Want to up your synth game?

Head to mosiaudio.com.

>> BRANDON: Up next, producer Jason Pear takes us to Lake County to discover the unique history behind the Marktown Historic District.

♪ >> We're in the Marktown Historic District in East Chicago, Indiana.

We're surrounded on three sides by steel mills, and one side by the BP refinery.

>> A unique location to be sure, and certainly not here by accident.

>> Clayton Mark was an industrialist from Chicago.

His primary plant was in Evanston, Illinois, and he was being robbed by the eastern steel companies.

So he decided he was going to build a steel company here.

>> But Clayton Mark, like other industrialists of the era, had an issue.

>> Workers weren't staying at the job site.

They would move on to some place else, and it was a lack of quality housing.

They didn't want to put their families in tenement houses.

In 1913, they bought 100 and some acres for the plant and Marktown.

>> Mark hired Illinois architect Howard Van Doren Shaw to design his namesake neighborhood.

>> It's referred to as Tudor Revival.

It also represents the Garden City concept that was brought about in England.

They had five floor plans in the original plan for Marktown.

Four-room duplex, six-room duplex, seven-room duplex, six-room singles, and then what we call the Marktown Quad.

Marktown was not only unique for Shaw, but it was more importantly unique for the nation because it set a new standard as to what you had to do if you wanted to make money in manufacturing.

You had to provide quality homes for the workers.

>> Marktown was unique in Northwest Indiana, but not for long.

>> Most of them came in during World War I, which was after this was planned and was being built.

And there's at least two of them in the immediate area, one is called Sunnyside in East Chicago that was built by Inland Steel, and the other one was the Pullman-Standard District over in Hammond.

>> There were copycats in the area and around the country, but Marktown featured something special.

>> Well, we park on the sidewalk, and we walk in the street.

And according to the original blueprints, that's exactly what was planned.

Cars weren't the major form of transportation back then.

>> Years later, when cars were the major form of transportation, this unique arrangement garnered Marktown national notoriety.

>> We made it into Ripley's Believe It or Not.

In 1967, we had our 50th anniversary, and the woman that lived next door was Mrs. Barnett, and she was on the committee, and she wrote Ripley's Believe It or Not.

This was when it was syndicated in newspapers, and she wrote to them.

And they said, we need some more information, and we need a photograph.

So they had a professional photographer come out and take a great photograph of people walking down the 400 block of Spring Street.

>> And the parking situation wasn't the only unique thing about Marktown.

>> When I grew up, if it snowed in the winter and the wind came out of the north, we had pink snow from all the iron oxides.

I thought I grew up in a Dr. Seuss book.

And then when we played baseball in the summer, with short pants on and that, we would go home with white oxides on our leg.

So we were the only neighborhood in America that the kids got their daily dose of iron through osmosis.

>> In 1975, Marktown was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

In 2017, it celebrated its 100th anniversary, but the future for Marktown is less clear.

According to Myers, out-of-state landlords have let many of these historic homes deteriorate, and neighboring industry, in an effort to reduce risk, has, for years, been purchasing and tearing down homes in Marktown.

♪ >> It's history.

It's what the National Register said.

It's important to the city, the state, and the nation, and if you can take it one step farther than that, it's a worldwide issue of housing for industries.

This is an opportunity to examine the culture of the nation at that time, because it lives on today.

This is my home.

This is where my family's been.

This is the only place I care to be.

♪ >> ASHLEY: You know, Brandon, I was thinking, this is really like the blueprint for what a lot of tech companies do now, and building these living communities for their employees so that it makes it easier for them to get to and from work, and make them better employees.

They really started that trend.

>> BRANDON: Yeah.

Want to learn more?

Just head to Marktown.org.

>> ASHLEY: Up next, we're headed to Hamilton County, where producer Saddam Abbas cools off at the Carmel Festival of Ice.

♪ >> There are so many events that happen here at Carter Green or throughout the city of Carmel, and this is just one of those many, and it takes a team of people.

You know, from contacting the carvers, making sure they can come in at the right time, we have enough of the ice for them, they have enough electrical outlets or their needs to be met for their sculpting.

It doesn't just happen here.

Last night, it's going on on Main Street, they have sculpting.

Tomorrow, they will have sculpting.

So it really takes a team of people from getting the logistics to promoting, and then honestly the involvement from the community.

And I think that's that special portion that brings it all together for me is this is a community that people really come out for these different events, and they become sort of staples, right?

We went through the holidays and we had the Christkindlmarkt, and then we swing into January and we jump right into the ice festival -- the Festival of Ice with the carving.

And so people get to know those.

That becomes part of their traditions throughout winter.

And so between the community and then the group of people working to put this together, it's truly amazing.

Look at the artistry that happens is incredible.

They take a 300-pound block of ice, stack them on top of each other, and a couple hours later have a beautiful sculpture.

It's truly unbelievable.

And it's really amazing because this is something that you only get to have, or it's tangible for only a few hours, you know, maybe a couple of days and then it melts.

So it's amazing that they create these sculptures for us, just, you know, short time, kind of a glimpse that we get to see 'em.

It's being a true artist.

When you watch them, not only is it incredible, but they get to recreate and recreate different types of art over and over again, and change it and make it new.

So really pretty amazing.

♪ >> BRANDON: All right, Ashley.

So some of the work that we have done in the past, people would describe as ephemeral.

Theater is ephemeral.

But imagine making something that you know will just change and melt in the course of maybe 24 hours if you are lucky.

>> ASHLEY: Yes, I can't imagine because a lot of time goes into those sculptures.

>> BRANDON: Yes, and they are so detailed and beautiful, and maybe that adds to the beauty knowing that you see it now, and when you come back, it's going to be gone.

>> ASHLEY: Want to learn more?

Just head to the address on your screen.

And as always, we would like to encourage you to stay connected with us.

>> BRANDON: Just head over to JourneyIndiana.org.

There you can see full episodes, connect with us on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram, and suggest stories from your neck of the woods.

>> ASHLEY: We also have a map feature that allows you to see where we've been and to plan your own Indiana adventures.

Well, Brandon, it's really exciting to be in our old stomping grounds.

And I think we should take a couple minutes and look around at all of the new things that are here.

>> BRANDON: Yes, unrecognizable.

>> ASHLEY: We will see you next time on -- >> TOGETHER: "Journey Indiana."

♪ >> Production support for "Journey Indiana" is provided by WTIU members.

Thank you!