Abstract. The paper describes how interpretations of multimedia documents can be formally derived using abduction over domain knowledge represented in an ontology. The approach uses an expressive ontology specification language, namely description logics in combination with logic programming rules, and formalizes the multimedia interpretation process using a combined abduction and deduction operation. We describe how the observables as well as the space of abducibles can be formally defined. The approach is evaluated using examples from text processing, but can also be applied to interpret content in other modalities.