A system and method are provided for dynamically generating a query using touch gestures. A virtual magnet is movable on a display device of a tactile user interface in response to touch. A user selects one of a set of text documents for review, which is displayed on the display. The system is configured for recognizing a highlighting gesture on the tactile user interface over the displayed document as a selection of a text fragment from the document text. The virtual magnet is populated with a query which is based on the text fragment selected with the highlighting gesture. The populated magnet is able to cause a subset of displayed graphic objects to exhibit a response to the magnet as a function of the query and the text content of the respective documents which the objects represent and/or to cause responsive instances in a text document to be displayed.