At Tate Modern’s baffling new exhibition of works by the architects Herzog & de Meuron, I chanced on one of the few information cards hidden on a table of resin blobs. I moved it slightly so I could read it better and instantly a woman materialised at my side. “I must ask you,” she said primly, “not to touch anything.” My companion and I muttered, blushed, waved our hands at each other. Left.

Touch Me, opening at the Victoria and Albert Museum on Thursday, is for everyone who has ever been told off for getting too close. The curators, Hugh Aldersey-Williams and Lauren Parker (the brain behind last year’s Shhh . . . audio exhibition), have tried to build a show that explores our physical interaction with the world around us, from how we use our iPods to how we react to proximity with strangers.

The show is separated into sections representing rooms and areas around a house; the first thing you notice is Yoshi Saito’s Hug chair. Resembling a big felt canoe, it’s difficult at first to know what to do with it. But putting aside your fear of reproach (you have to do that a lot with this exhibition, it’s quite liberating) and clambering in, you find you can wrap it around you and a friend, or sit on it and be gently pushed together in a cosy snuggle.

In Dining, Kitchen, Living, domestic objects — a light, a fruit bowl — behave in an unexpected way when you try to use them. Paul Cocksedge’s Watt? Light doesn’t have a switch. Instead you complete the electric circuit by drawing a pencil line on a piece of paper (there’s a small satisfaction when the light comes on). The Lonely Home bench by Tobi Schneidler and m.a.o.works tries to throw you off when you sit down. It is annoying and induces a combative mood, which makes you feel very silly when you realise that you’re fighting with a chair.

In Bedroom, the drawers, predictably enough, are filled with objects devoted to sexual pleasure (fortunately you can’t try these out, though I suppose they might sell them in the shop) and you can sit, stand or roll around on a rug which feels exactly as pleasurable as hessian is nasty. But the star of this room is the St Martins graduate Tomoko Hayashi’s Mutsugoto/Pillow Talk. Conceived as a communication device for long-distance relationships, the bed records your silhouette and allows you to write a message to your lover on your own body. The message can be revealed only by him (or her) lying on their own bed wherever they are in the world and matching the shape of your silhouette. It is a charming, if bizarre, piece of technology. “Everything is so fast,” says Hayashi in her wistful little voice. “This is more meaningful and personal.”

As we depend increasingly on technology it comes in ever smaller packages and our ways of using it have to change: in Office, the iPod and BlackBerry display nods to “the rise of the thumb” as Hugh Aldersey Williams calls it. Here, too, the prospect of a virtual keyboard that can be projected on to any smooth surface prompts visions of a desk free of annoying bits of machinery.

Next is a selection of games and experiments to get you thinking about how much you use your sense of touch — you can fool yourself into thinking that the Phantom Hand is your own and try to identify the Mystery on a Stick. The especially brave can take a deep breath and plunge a hand into A Touch Disgusting. Warning! says the label, You may be disturbed when you learn the contents of this box. And indeed you might: “I had a two-way compulsion when they arrived in the post,” said Lauren Parker, “not to touch them but at the same time to put them in my mouth.” Sorry, that’s all you’re going to get.

Finally, Garden is the most fun I’ve had for a long time. PingPongPlus, developed by the MIT Media Lab, projects fish on to a table-tennis table which swim away startled from each bounce of the ball. Even if you’re hopeless at ping-pong, it’s still great. Not, however, quite as much fun as Collabolla, produced by the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea. A backlash against the rise of the thumb, it’s a whole new way to play Pac Man. Not alone, not using your hands, but boinging around on space hoppers. There’s no more enjoyable way to make a fool of yourself in public.

Touch Me is at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London SW7, from Thursday to August 29 (020-7942 2000)