A Finger in Midair Pierces the Bubble of the Signifier
I have noticed a certain gesture: when people speak of abstract things, they often raise a finger unconsciously. The gesture seems meaningless, yet it extends language into the air, tracing an invisible line of intention. That finger points to no physical object—it points into the void, toward an unreachable boundary, a vacuum between meaning and matter. Thus, the “finger in midair” becomes a bodily metaphor: neither command nor performance, but a penetrative motion that lightly pierces the bubble of the signifier.
The act of pointing makes language visible. While the voice is still assembling meaning, the hand has already reached the edge of the concept. It points not to an object, but to the very act of pointing. This gesture is the body’s intuitive response to abstraction— a failed attempt to reach meaning, which nonetheless produces a new dimension of perception.
Modern devices amplify this gesture. The red TrackPoint of a ThinkPad seems to prolong the index finger infinitely; beneath Apple’s trackpad lies a boundless plane. Both train a kind of “pointing into the void,” a haptic behavior that lets us touch an interface without limits, to drag, zoom, and glide within virtual infinity. In contrast, the mouse feels confined— restricted by the desk, tethered by its cable, constantly reminding us of the body’s reach and the arm’s boundary.
In these gestures, the metaphor of language overlaps with the logic of machines. Pointing is no longer directed toward another person, but becomes an inward operation. When we touch the void, we touch the surface of the signifier; and in the instant of “piercing,” meaning falls into an unnamable space. It is not an act of aggression, but of linguistic transgression—a moment when the finger breaks through the membrane of syntax, allowing the emptiness of the signified to briefly appear.
Through my work My Finger Prolongs Itself in a Void, I attempted to visualize this process of “pointing toward a concept.” The senses extend along the direction of the red point, as if continually approaching the edge of the void, even piercing through some invisible barrier. When intention and computation converge on this single spot, our attention withdraws from the object itself— from manners, conventions, and perfected forms. The anxiety once carried by the act of pointing is momentarily suspended: it becomes a signified without a signifier, stretching within the purity of meaning itself.
This gesture carries a uniquely Chinese resonance. “Lingkong yizhi” (凌空一指) retains echoes of Daoist emptiness and martial-spiritual poise— it signifies both power and release. In Western traditions, the pointing hand often carries a divine charge: from the meeting of God and Adam in The Creation of Adam, to the upward gestures of religious painting— each summoning a realm of ideality that can never be reached. By contrast, the outstretched, horizontal hand symbolizes reason, experience, and the empirical world.
To me, the “finger in midair” is an act beyond semantics. Before meaning takes form, the signifier has already been pierced by the gesture. In that instant, the bubble of signification bursts; air becomes the medium of thought, and the body performs what language cannot. At that moment, there truly exists a signified without a signifier.
She Luyun
11.23 2025