Fast trade? Interdisciplinarity under time pressure

This paper addresses two questions. The first is: Do cross-disciplinary teams that exist only for rather short periods of time have a chance to realize some form of dialogue across disciplinary boundaries? To approach this topic, the concept of trading zones is applied, as it has been introduced by Peter Galison and developed by other authors. Empirical data come from participant observation during a workshop on sonification, i.e. the auditory display of data. In this context, a second question is addressed. While there exists a vivid discussion on how to measure outcome or performance of research projects, there has been no attempt to measure the degree of interdisciplinarity within a collaborative structure. I propose a methodology that attempts to transfer concepts found within qualitative frameworks onto a quantitative research strategy. In concluding, I discuss some flaws of this ap-proach and propose further lines of work.