How do we choose our specific material, our means of communication?
"Accidentally."
Something speaks to us, a sound, a touch, hardness or softness, it catches us and asks us to be formed. We are finding our language, and as we go along we learn to obey their rules and their limits. We have to obey, and adjust to those demands. Ideas flow from it to us and though we feel to be the creator we are involved in a dialogue with our medium. The more subtle we are tuned to our medium, the more intuitive our actions will become. Not listening to it ends in failure...What I am trying to get across is that material is a means of communication. That listening to it, not dominating it, makes us truly active, that is: to be active, be passive. The finer tuned we are to it, the closer we come to art.
Anni Albers, "Material as Metaphor," in SELECTED WRITINGS ON DESIGN
