French design graduate Rémi Bouhaniche has designed a light that is dimmed by distorting its surface.

Called Etirement, the light features a translucent membrane stretched over a steel frame which, when stretched by pulling a rod, alters the intensity of the light.

Pulling the rod also turns the light on and off.

Etirement will be on show at the Les Ecoles de Design 2009 show at VIA France in Paris from 7 July to 23 August.

Bouhaniche, who has just graduated from the Ecole Supérieure d'Art et Design de Saint-Etienne, is part of new French collective Studio Matière A, who designed the Vaisselier Système D storage system featured in our earlier story.

Here's some info from Bouhaniche:

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For this project called « Etirement », I worked on a common gesture that everyone know: the tuning of the light intensity. I concentrated on the working of a very precise and detailed movement focused on one point. "Etirement" creates a flowing and expressive body language, a poetic time from a daily basic action.

I first thought of a shape which goes beyond all category of design. "Etirement" came upon the surface of a drawing paper as a mental picture. I wanted to paint an abstract landscape. From the drawing I concluded that the user creates the shape by manipulating the surface of the object. This lamp is a temporary form which moves and changes in function  of the intensity of the light.

The intensity lowers down and rises up according to the distortion of a membrane. I have shaped it on the lines of a human body composed by a skin (fabric) tensed over a skeleton (metal structure). To obtain the visual and tactile effect I installed a mechanism hidden inside the black part.

This object has been created in the frame of my diploma called «  The mechanical of the surfaces » passed at the Art and Design school of Saint Etienne, 2009. I Questionned the role of the surface into the process of making and creating shapes, gestures and images. In this way, I studied and experimented simple materials such as wood , cane, textile, metal rods and pipes…

«  Etirement » will be exhibited at VIA France from July 7th to August 23rd: www.via.fr