Interfaces for emergent semantics in multimedia databases

In this paper, we introduce our approach to multimedia database interfaces. Although we deal mainly with image databases, most of the ideas we present can be generalized to other types of data. We argue that, when dealing with complex data, such as images, the problem of access must be redefined along different lines than text databases. In multimedia databases, the semantics of the data is imprecise, and depends in part on the user's interpretation. This observation made us consider the development of interfaces in which the user explores the database rather than querying it. In this paper, we give a brief justification of our position and present the exploratory interface, which we have developed for our image database El Nino.