Machina Emblematica: Multimodal Information Retrieval Prototype for CH and DH

The goal of Machina Emblematica was to implement a simple state of the art Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) system that makes the digital 1668 edition of Joachim Camerarius’ Symbola et Emblemata more accessible and explorable. The team published an innovative, user-friendly chatbot prototype that enables users to ask questions about the emblems and search for related contents in the Symbola et Emblemata. Machina Emblematica innovates access and exploration of the 17th century Latin emblems by providing an assistant that generates user query responses in English based on the most relevant multimodal content retrieved. The prototype advances existing solutions from projects enhancing accessibility and exploration of historical images and texts. This project was funded through the BMFTR joint project HERMES.