Fashion fans and tech geeks found common ground last night at Diana Eng’s lecture on fashion and technology, one of the many free events sponsored by the Telfair Museum and the City of Savannah as part of the PULSE: Art and Technology Festival.

Eng first gained recognition for her 2003 collaboration with Emily Albinski on an inflatable dress featured on the cover of ID magazine. The former Project Runway contestant gave an intriguing talk about the many diverse uses of technology in fashion, from Speedo’s Fast Skin high performance athletic suits that emulate the ultra-sleek skin of sharks, to t-shirts laced with vitamin C. One of the most futuristic designs highlighted in the lecture was the HAL, or Hybrid Assistive Limb. This suit receives electrical impulses from muscles and imitates the wearer’s motions, allowing the wearer to lift up to five times as much weight as he or she could lift unaided. The applications for technology like this are really endless, from assisting disabled people, to construction, to rescue workers, to inevitably, the military.

Eng also showcased some of her own designs, included a couple from her new book, Fashion Geek. Her love of science and technology and cute, fun sense of style combine to create pieces like a flower USB necklace and a hoodie with built-in headphones. She has also collaborated on a number of innovative projects, including PupSight, a dog harness rigged with a camera to allow the pet’s owner to see a dog’s eye view by calling in from a cell phone. Eng and her cohorts took the grand prize at the 2006 Yahoo Hack Day with their Blogging In Motion purse, which snaps a photo after every 30 steps the wearer takes, and then automatically uploads the photo to a blog.

With all of this great inspiration, it’s hard not to want to go home and start constructing some high-tech clothes of your own. Fortunately, Eng’s book, Fashion Geek, has lots of inspiring projects (and adorable photographs) to get your creative juices flowing.

And, by all means, if you haven’t been to the Jepson yet to see the PULSE installations, get going! The inflatable sculpture spilling from the second floor into the lobby needs to be seen in person to be truly appreciated. Tonight at 6pm, check out the free screening of Copyright Criminals, a documentary about the history of sampling in hip hop and beyond. Saturday is the last day of PULSE, so don’t wait!