The Angel Stars
Augmented reality (AR)
Variable dimensions
2017
Richard Humann • The Angel Stars installed over the Giudecca Canal, Venice, Italy, 2017
The Angel Stars is an augmented reality installation by Richard Humann that extends the mythology of his Ascension series, which premiered at the 2017 Venice Biennale. Created for OPEN20 on Giudecca in conjunction with the Venice Film Festival, the work turns the skies above the Venetian Lagoon into a celestial tribute to Hollywood and its enduring cultural influence.
The installation celebrates the legendary stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, an era when cinema created a new pantheon of larger-than-life figures whose images, performances, and personal mythologies traveled far beyond the movie screen. Through their films, these actors helped shape popular imagination, establishing ideals of beauty, romance, heroism, and glamour that influenced audiences around the world. Their identities became inseparable from the characters they portrayed, transforming performers into cultural icons whose influence continues long after their lifetimes.
Using augmented reality, Humann places these cinematic figures above the Giudecca Canal and the Venetian Lagoon, where they appear to float among the stars. Viewers can encounter the installation from locations on Giudecca and the Lido, experiencing the familiar landscape of Venice as the setting for an alternative celestial mythology. The technology allows these figures to occupy an imagined space above the physical world, bridging the worlds of cinema, history, and myth.
Within the universe of Ascension, The Angel Stars extends the idea that cultural icons can become modern constellations. Just as ancient civilizations immortalized their heroes among the stars, modern society elevates its own figures through film, celebrity, and collective memory. Hollywood’s Golden Age becomes another mythology, populated by screen legends whose images continue to inhabit our cultural consciousness.
The title suggests both the celestial placement of these figures and the almost supernatural status granted to movie stars. Their apparent ascension above Venice transforms them into enduring presences, suspended between history and imagination. Through this installation, Humann considers how cinema creates its own immortals, preserving the glamour and mythology of an era while allowing its stars to shine, symbolically, for eternity.
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Photo credit: Richard Humann Studio