The types of art displayed in the hallowed halls of Boston’s Museum of Fine Art vary drastically. There are traditional portraits, contemporary blown glass, mummies and now, joining them and everything in between will be an iPhone app. That’s right, for the first time ever the MFA will showcase an iPhone app as a work of art, and the app is also something of a social experiment.

Somebody is an iOS app that works by using a third-party to convey a text message to a friend. Users send a text to a designated individual, but the message isn’t sent directly to that person. Rather, the message goes to a Somebody user of your choice that happens to be in close proximity to the target, and that user then goes on to convey the message to the target person.

Created by filmmaker and writer Miranda July, Somebody is just one facet to a new MFA exhibit opening in July. It’s called Conversation Piece and it’s designed to “invite interaction by serving as platforms for conversation… blurring the lines between art and everyday life, each of these works asks the viewer to reconsider the surrounding world through the lens of art,” according to the museum.

Given that the purpose of Somebody is to relay conversations through a complete stranger and therefore alter the perception of the dialogue, and that the museum is a hotspot (a top locale to find… somebody), the app proves to fit in the exhibit as well as f-bombs do in Lenny Clarke’s unabashed verbal spewings.

It’s interesting to see, too, that despite someone’s motive for conceptualizing and building a mobile app, the way it’s digested, how it’s interacted with, how it appears aesthetically and how it evokes feeling is considered by even the most prestigious art institutions in the world to be fine art.

Conversation Piece opens on October 10 and Somebody is available now to download free on iOS mobile devices.

Image via Somebody App