MUSCLE aims at creating and supporting a pan-European Network of Excellence to foster close collaboration between research groups in multimedia datamining on the one hand and machine learning on the other in order to make breakthrough progress towards the following objectives: (b) Harnessing the full potential of machine learning and cross-modal interaction for the (semi-) automatic generation of metadata with high semantic content for multimedia documents; (b) Applying machine learning for the creation of expressive, context-aware, self-learning, and human-centered interfaces that will be able to effectively assist users in the exploration of complex and rich multimedia content; (c) Improving interoperability and exchangeability of heterogeneous and distributed (meta)data by enabling data descriptions of high semantic content (e.g. ontologies, MPEG7 and XML schemata) and inference schemes that can reason about these at the appropriate levels. (d) Through dissemination, training and industrial liaison, contribute to the distribution and uptake of the technology by relevant end-users such as industry, education, and the service sector. In particular, close interactions with other IP"s and NOE"s in this and related activity fields are planned. (e) Through accomplishing the above, MUSCLE will facilitate the broad and democratic access to information and knowledge for all European citizens (e.g. e-Education, enriched cultural heritage).