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Herd of 30 life-sized ox and 100 mini-ox sculptures can be found throughout the city of Oxford; SSL is sponsoring a life-size ox designed by Oxford-based artist Rawz
Visitors to Solid State Logic’s headquarters in Oxford earlier this year might have been surprised to encounter an ox in the reception area, one of a herd of 30 life-sized sculptures decorated by local and national artists that are currently to be found on the streets of the city. Part of OxTrail 2024, a fund-raiser for Sobell House Hospice organized in partnership with Wild in Art, the SSL-sponsored ox has been decorated by Oxford-based creative Rawz and is the key to one lucky winner spending a day recording and mixing at In-Spire Sounds, a local SSL-equipped recording studio.
Rawz is a multidisciplinary, multimedia artist who sums up what he does very simply: “I like making art and making things that tell a story. I once worked with a Zimbabwean artist who told me that in his culture there’s no differentiation between a painter, a musician, or a sculptor; you’re just a creative. So, I’m a creative.” While much of his focus has been on spoken word, poetry, and music, his creativity has also expanded into collage, sculpture, videography, and photography.
Decorating the ox took Rawz nine 10- or 12-hour days spread over more than two weeks at SSL’s headquarters. “It was quite an intense experience,” he says. He didn’t see his ox again until the entire herd, which includes over 100 smaller ox sculptures decorated by local schools and community groups, came together at a launch event shortly before they were dispersed onto the streets of the city, where they will remain until August 29. “Mine is in a fairly prominent place near the train station in central Oxford,” he reports.
Rawz is involved with day-to-day operations at In-Spire Sounds, which was established about five years ago to provide affordable professional recording, mixing and mastering services that are supportive of the community and charitable activities. “It’s run by one of my best friends, a producer and musician named King Boyden. I work closely with him and bring some of my experience to the practice,” he says, such as running sessions and working with youth projects at the studio.
“He’s the SSL fanboy amongst us,” he continues. “He pretty much had a fully kitted-out SSL studio before the sponsorship happened.” The equipment list for the studio, which is in the historic Oxford neighborhood of Jericho, includes a BiG SiX SuperAnalogueTM console, an SSL 2+ interface, an outboard G Series Bus Compressor as well as 500 Series LMC+, E Series EQ and Compressor modules, SSL plug-ins, and an SSL CONNEX USB mic.
Rawz has a home studio setup that includes an SSL 2+ audio interface. “It’s just a really intuitive, handy piece of kit. It’s one of the key bits of kit in the bag. It’s the interface that we use when we do gigs or when we’re doing workshops in locations outside the studio. That’s part of my practice; I really like to be influenced by where I’m creating. The SSL 2+ is a handy tool for that, because it’s so portable. All you need is SSL 2+, a microphone, and a laptop, and you’ve got everything you need.”
The SSL 2+ will no doubt come in handy when Rawz embarks on his next project for Digging Crates, a project that developed from his relationship with Oxford University, where he is a resident sound artist. It’s an appointment that was unimaginable to a young Rawz. “I’ve lived in Oxford my whole life, and Oxford is synonymous with the university, but the Oxford that I’m from is among the most deprived areas in the country. No one in my community really has any involvement with the university.”
But during the COVID lockdown, he says, “I had this idea for a project to sample musical instruments in museum collections and I wrote a proposal to the university museum. That turned into Digging Crates.” Digging Crates Vol. 1, released in 2022 on Inner Peace Records, interprets the African musical instrument collection at Oxford University’s Pitt Rivers Museum through the lens of hip-hop composed in the museum space in collaboration with musicians from Africa. “I’m looking at developing other projects now, creating and recording music in the natural world,” he says, where the SSL 2+ is sure to be an essential tool.
Another of his projects, Epoch, brought together Oxford University researchers in the fields of artificial intelligence, immunology, and modern language with community artists and Inner Peace Records to explore the interplay between science, technology, and creativity. Also spawning an art exhibition, the collaboration — dubbed “the world’s first hip-hop time machine” — generated an album of hip-hop pieces produced using the technology of five time periods, from the past to the future, including one recorded at Sugar Ray’s in Essex, an authentic 1950s mono studio.
The eight-week OxTrail 2024 public art project runs until August 29, and is in aid of Sobell House Hospice, which provides palliative and end of life care to Oxfordshire residents, a cause with significance to Rawz because of a family member receiving care. An OxTrail app enables users to log the codes on each ox they discover and unlock rewards and prizes from the sponsors.
At the end of the trail, most of the life-sized sculptures and some of the smaller oxen will be auctioned off, with proceeds going to the hospice. “I’m hoping my ox will find a home in SSL’s reception area, where it was created,” Rawz says. “That would be cool.”
For those interested in finding out more about the OxTrail 2024 event you can visit https://oxtrail2024.co.uk
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