The Kitten Pops
Augmented reality (AR)
Variable dimensions
2018
Richard Humann • The Kitten Pops installed over Hangang Park, Seoul, South Korea
The Kitten Pops by Richard Humann is an augmented reality installation that extends the mythology of his Ascension series. Created for the 2018 Hangang Art Park exhibition in Seoul, South Korea, the work is situated above the Han River, bringing contemporary Korean popular culture into an imagined celestial landscape.
Modern K-pop emerged in the 1990s, shaped by South Korea’s developing idol music industry, which combined pop music with choreographed performance, distinctive visual identities, and carefully cultivated relationships between performers and their fans. Over the following decades, K-pop expanded beyond South Korea to become a global cultural phenomenon, supported by digital media, international fan communities, and the growing worldwide influence of Korean popular culture.
The Kitten Pops are not an actual K-pop band, but an amalgamation of the genre’s performers, imagery, and cultural identity. Rather than representing a specific group, the work brings together the broader phenomenon of K-pop, transforming its collective influence into a fictional cultural icon. This composite figure reflects how the genre has become more than a musical movement, evolving into a worldwide phenomenon encompassing fashion, entertainment, visual identity, and contemporary youth culture.
Within the universe of Ascension, The Kitten Pops treats this phenomenon as another chapter in the mythology of modern cultural icons. Just as ancient civilizations elevated their heroes and deities into the heavens, contemporary society creates its own idols through popular culture. By combining the characteristics of an entire musical movement into a single imagined entity, Humann creates a contemporary counterpart to the collective figures of ancient mythology.
Placed above the Han River through augmented reality, the work transforms Seoul’s familiar landscape into a setting for this invented mythology. The river becomes a meeting point between the physical city and an imagined universe in which modern cultural phenomena occupy the symbolic territory once reserved for gods and heroes.
The Kitten Pops reflects the evolving nature of cultural mythology, suggesting that the icons we celebrate change with each generation. Within Ascension, the work presents K-pop not through an individual star or band, but as a collective cultural force whose influence extends far beyond its place of origin.
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Photo credit: Richard Humann Studio