The Entanglement of Arts and Sciences: On the Transaction Costs of Transdisciplinary Research Settings

Using the research project eMotion – mapping museum experience as a working example, the exposition examines the advantages and risks, challenges and hurdles, methods and management of projects based on transdisciplinary art research. On the one hand, analysis shows that the participating researchers’ embedded character, in their respective disciplines, requires a specific management in order to increase the formation of group identity and to get used to collective authorship. On the other, it underlines that transdisciplinary research does more than simply shed light on the investigated object from several perspectives. Rather, the integration of the arts can lead to a new epistemology via different forms of data displays such as sonification and image-producing processes, which in turn create a new aesthetic dimension.