Continuing on what hdb suggested,

Each object lives in a space where the said Attributes are the coordinates.

Coordinates can be discreet or binary or continuous, e.g. binary: Apple -> (orange=0, red=1, plant=1, fruit=1,toy=0). Continuous means that there is so much probability that apple is orange (0.5) or apple is a toy (0.01). etc. Notice that each object is characterised by a set of coordinates which includes ALL attributes. If attribute does not relate to object then it is set to zero.

In this space, there is a distance metric, e.g. euclidean (others exist) to tell you how far apart are an Apple and a pumpkin.

Clustering is a process which groups nearby objects (in this space) together based on the distance metric chosen.

I see a problem with the above approach: most objects will have most of their coordinates set to zero, e.g. an Apple has only 3 attributes turned on and I guess the rest 72 will be off/zero. The problem is that clustering may group together objects because they have in common the absence of a lot of attributes, and you probably want to group objects together because they have in common the presence of an attribute. An obstacle but not a tough one.