Sher Minn has a
good post about what's lacking about digital objects and materials.Computers make for very cold material for creative work. It is intangible – perlin noise, space-walking algorithms, random number generators, mathematical concepts, you can’t hold them. It doesn’t have the same tactility as things of this world.
I miss being able to grasp material in my hands, manipulate it, seeing it interact with my body and surroundings. I want to inhabit it, adorn myself with it, to get lost in its sensations. Maybe that’s why I am so in love with metalworking for making jewelry.
I think that, for me, what makes physical object compelling is not necessarily that they're touchable, but they have infinite levels of detail and are part of a very complex system (the real world), making interactions between it and that system very rich with possibility.