Brilliant Work of Art Proves Raw Meat Is Great at Using Tinder

In just two and a half years, Tinder has gone from quirky new app to one of the biggest online dating services in the world. Hilary Duff uses it. Leonardo DiCaprio uses it. “Swipe left” and “swipe right” have become synonymous with rejection and approval. And now it’s become the inspiration for Tender – a gorgeous and hypnotic piece of functional art created by four students at Leiden University in The Netherlands.

A video demonstrating the swiping meat offered this description of the piece:

Tender is the easy way to connect with new and interesting meat around you. Switch on and if someone likes you back, it’s a match!

The students’ groundbreaking work, reported earlier this week by The Creators Project, consists of a spinning fork that rotates a hunk of raw meat over a phone running the Tinder app. As the meat spins, it swipes right over and over and over again. By representing humanity with raw meat, the artists remind us of our animal nature — constantly searching for a mate because of our biological need for human connection. The counter-clockwise direction of the spin suggests how counterintuitive our desires can be. We sometimes fall for those who, on paper, are our worst match. Why? Who knows. Such is the mystery of love.

This brilliant piece will be exhibited “for the first time at the Habitat art exhibition next Saturday at Radion Amsterdam.” I’m sad to be missing it.