A new iPhone app by artist, filmmaker and writer Miranda July (born in 1974) will form part of the exhibition, Conversation Piece at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), on October 10. The first app to be featured as an artwork at the Museum, Somebody (2014) will join performance, installation, sculpture and video in an exhibition of works that invite interaction by serving as platforms for conversation. As a mobile app, Somebody proposes a new way to communicate: when "somebody" sends a friend a message, it doesn’t go directly to that that friend, but to another nearby user. That user––possibly a stranger––delivers the message verbally, acting as a stand-in. Conceived as a far-reaching public art project, the app encourages performance and is a play on outsourcing, inspiring dialogue and building community. MFA galleries are a hotspot for the app, which means they will be one of the top places to find “somebody” to deliver a message.

For more on July’s work, the MFA is hosting the lecture “Miranda July: The First Bad Man” with the artist on Wednesday and Thursday, April 15 and 16, 2015––part of the MFA’s Ruth and Carl J. Shapiro Celebrity Lectures: Evenings with Creative Minds.

Additional contemporary works on view in Conversation Piece include both loans and objects from the MFA’s collection. Inspired by informal portraiture from 18th century Britain––which depicted people engaging in commonplace activities––Conversation Piece takes everyday objects as a starting point for conversation. Artworks that reference a curtain, television, table or chairs tease out novelties from the mundane, and disrupt viewers’ expectations of objects and interactions in a museum environment. 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. Included are works by artists such as Sarah Crowner, Pedro Reyes, María José Arjona and Jaime Davidovich. Together with these works, visitors become the active subjects of a contemporary “conversation piece.”