Relational Objects

Abstract Over a decade ago, I collected a coincidence mixer from a 1960s cosmic ray observatory in Inuvik, Northwest Territories. As a museum artifact, the mixer reveals an evolving approach to scientific instruments as part of, and gaining new meaning and value within complex material, archival, digital, geographic, and social relations. This electronic instrument carries a material culture from cyclotrons, atmospheric science, cosmic rays, and electronics in post-Second World War Canada. However, the mixer was also located on Indigenous Gwich’in and Inuvialuit territory, an understudied and increasingly relevant part of its biography. In this paper, I explore these dynamic connections within the mixer’s material culture and biographical journey. Through this kind of research at the material and social levels, we encounter a changing conception of scientific instruments as vessels in a sea of relations, and what this means for instrument studies, collection databases, and research in science museums.