What is the hpDJ? It monitors the responses of clubbers and uses that to select what music it plays (see www.hpl.hp.com/news/2001/jan-mar/hpDJdemo.html). It can also use feedback from the crowd to compose new music by assembling samples and loops on a virtual multitrack recorder, and then plays the new "record". The intention is for clubbers to be jointly composing the music they are dancing to, with no DJ and music producers involved.

What kind of computers/systems do you use to develop such products? We use Hewlett-Packard Kayak XU800 workstations running Windows 2000. The first hpDJ was developed in MatLab, a mathematical programming environment that needs a lot of memory. The most recent version is in Java, and that will run on a mid-range HP OmniBook laptop. We also use an HP Jornada palm-top to demo the MP3 sound files created by our system.

Where did the idea come from? I am a (very) amateur DJ, plus I have a long background of working in artificial intelligence (AI) research, so I realised AI techniques could be used to create a computer system that can do a lot of what a human DJ does. Earlier this year, DJ Judge Jules said: "It's all about spontaneity... which can't be supplied by anything other than the human real deal." With the new version of hpDJ, the real deal no longer has to be human.

Why did you develop the hpDJ? Researchers at HP Labs have a lot of freedom to pursue whatever interests them and hpDJ fits in nicely with HP's interests in digital entertainment.

Won't the hpDJ take away the "shared experience" of clubbing? It will make clubbing even more of a shared experience: the crowd will be communally (yet indirectly) creating the music they hear next, on the basis of their responses to the music playing now.

When will you test it? Probably not until next summer. All we would need is a willing bunch of clubbers: DJs are no longer required.

Favourite websites? Juno Records for a huge range of dance vinyl and great service; Yamaha A5000; and my DJ decks and mixer. I have a Yamaha QY70 "walkstation" - a digital music multi-voice synthesiser and sequencer with audio effects and a 16-track mixer all in a battery-powered box the size of a videocassette -fantastic for writing music on long flights.

What next? Maybe we will release a web-demo of the music-production side of hpDJ. I am pretty sure it will be fun.