Multimedia Esperanto

Multimedia Esperanto is a formal artificial language for the modeling of multimedia content. The name derives from Esperanto and emphasizes the ambition to foster accessibility and semantic understanding of multimedia contents for every human independently on sensual or cognitive deficiencies and disabilities or cultural origin. It allows to provide every human with a uniform semantic and artistic impression of an arbitrary multimedia content.

The grammar and vocabulary are based on multimedia structures like certain color sequences and specific pattern arrangements (Visual Archetypes). As an artificial language, Multimedia Esperanto is not genealogically related to any ethnic language.

Originally defined by Philipp E. Haindl and further developed by a group of French and Austrian students, Multimedia Esperanto now is a versatile and universally applicable modeling language, which harnesses the human's individualities for its constant enhancement and expansion.

History
The foundations of Multimedia Esperanto go back to the theory of archetypes of the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung and picture theory of language, which became known as propositions 1-3 of his famous work Tractatus logico-philosophicus.

Both theories are mainly based upon visual symbols for prototypes of ideas and are linked with the semantics of observed information. Following Jung's theory they subsequently become involved in the semantic interpretation of information, whereas L. Wittgenstein's theory expects visual symbols to possess the same logical structure as the semantics being associated with the related visual information.

By 2004, a prototype of a visual alphabet for the computation of visual symbols was developed, which combined the aspects of both theories to evaluate if images follow a visual grammar similar to their semantics. This prototype was intended to ease the computation of classifiers for machine learning applications allowing the computer to grasp the meaning and implication of an image (machine image understanding).

The visual symbols being computed with the prototype were evaluated for their mathematical uniqueness in the full set of possible symbols and the proband's unambiguous connection between the symbol and the regarding semantics with the ambition to trace single visual symbols in imagery. Assuming that a single image incorporates multiple visual symbols following a logical order, the prototype was later improved to also detect multiple symbols in images, which are jointly associated with the images' semantics.

In spring 2005, the prototype was extended to also regard the geometrical dependencies of visual symbols in an image as well as the correlation between proper recognition of visual symbols and surrounding color situation. In contrast to former versions, which contained a fixed set of visual symbols and language elements, it allowed the computation of these symbols and elements on demand by different communities of people.

Asking different communities to compute their own visual symbols and language elements was one of the major steps in supporting perception and culture dependent semantics of visual symbols and made Multimedia Esperanto a versatile language, which, though open to user's diversities, also respects the individual demands for being universally applicable.

Language Features

Just like any other language, Multimedia Esperanto is based upon an alphabet and a grammar
prescribing the way letters must be arranged to form a sentence. In this context, letters
are composed of specific, auxiliary visual patterns, called Visual Archetypes, and the grammar is
derived from Wittgenstein’s theory of visual language. As any other language, Multimedia Esperanto
is a means to convey information simply by forming or translating sentences (represented by visual contents augmented with specific visual patterns), which mediate certain
semantics and propositions to the beholder and thus facilitate to recognize a visual information's semantic proposition.

Color Equivalents
Color equivalents are ordinary colors, which are computed representatives for specific sets of similar colors not singly distinguishable by the human eye. These color equivalents are equally perceivable by every human independently on sensual constraints and can thus provide the same impression for everybody. They can be imagined as visual «common denominators» for similar colors, which would otherwise be perceived differently and should thus be substituted.

Visual Archetypes

The theory of archetypes was first described by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung, who was also the founder of Analytical Psychology. The main proposition of Jung's theory is that archetypes are innate prototypes for ideas, which may subsequently become involved in the interpretation of observed information. Archetypes can be imagined as a sort of psychological organs, directly analogous to our physical, bodily organs: both being morphological givens for the species and both arising at least partially through evolutionary processes. They are symbols, which occur in our consciousness and link sensual information with certain sensual impressions and images in our minds.

Visual Archetypes build an interface between Jung's theory and modern informatics and facilitate understanding of visual contents by intensively mediating its semantic proposition, which notably supports people with cognitive deficiencies to perceive digital artistic contents more tangible.

Exhibitions
International exhibitions and festivals of Multimedia Esperanto projects:
* Linz (October 2005, Lange Nacht der Forschung)
* Paris (March 2006, Spring Technology Briefing)
* Berlin (May 2006, Spring Technology Workshop)
* Linz (July 2006, )
* Washington (expected November 2007, Winter Developer Symposium)

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