They quickly realised they couldn’t afford Tunbridge Wells itself so they took a look at surrounding villages

They quickly realised they couldn’t afford Tunbridge Wells itself so they took a look at surrounding villages.They were dreaming of a period country cottage with oak beams and a roaring fire; they bought a four-bedroom, detached house circa 1970, but it is still “brilliant” in their eyes: “spacious rooms and large garden”. By Fiona Brandhorst

WHEN Alex White leaves his home near Peterborough for work every morning, a little plaque on the house opposite reminds him just how far he has to travel: London 87 miles.
We all know someone like Alex, indeed, we may even be like Alex, or one of the many disillusioned Londoners who packs his bags and heads for the towns and villages that make up commuter land in search of decent schools, less aggressive driving or perhaps just a better life.Deciding to commute to his job in central London was the easy part for Geoff Hurrell It was just a question of from where. “We haven’t looked back,” says Julie who, a year after their move, feels well settled in a community with a high percentage of ex-Londoners. The village had to be pretty, have a good school and “a couple of pubs, a post office and a Chinese” Pembury, now part of Tunbridge’s sprawl fitted the bill. With his wife, Julie, expecting their third child, they were rapidly outgrowing their modern south London town house and knew that it was time to make their longed- for break for the country.Weekends were spent investigating the commuter trail from Essex through Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire and finally down to Kent Tunbridge Wells was the end of their line Geoff, an IT specialist, puts it down to a “gut feeling”. As yet, however, there is no planning department for space to watch over the erection of unsightly space-sculptures.

When there is, do we want a room full of astrophysicists making those aesthetic judgements?`The Eye of the Storm, Artists in the Maelstrom of Science’ takes place at The Royal Institution, London, 19-20 February (0171-375 3690).. What is it about the city? As soon as people are in, they want to get out. To construct and deploy a 30m Cosmic Dancer in space would cost, Woods estimate, around $5m.Although Pepsi managed to float an inflatable Cola can from Mir, the US senate has thankfully passed legislation preventing advertising in space that would be visible to earth without the aid of a telescope. “Every sculpture made before has had to deal with gravity,” Woods enthuses. “A lot of 3-D art deserves to be floating – it looks far better.”Woods’s real dream lies in huge-scale space-sculptures such as the Orbiting Unification Ring Satellite which would be visible from earth as a circle in the sky approximately an eighth the size of the moon But the main problem remains funding.

“It took 10 years of constant work and cost me $100,000.” A twisting aluminium tube, painted green so that it wouldn’t get lost amidst the clutter on Mir, Cosmic Dancer is designed to have numerous viewing perspectives as it floats in weightlessness. In May 1993 he succeeded in sending his geometrical sculpture Cosmic Dancer up to the Mir Space Station “It wasn’t easy,” he says. Perhaps her residency at the Science Museum this September will introduce her to new contacts and opportunities. “I know it’s going to be a long project,” she says gamely, “but I want to do it, and I will find a way.”Arthur Woods proved that persistence can pay off. “Scientists were appalled by the idea, yet hundreds have been destroyed in the name of science,” says Parker.

In 1996 Parker created public meteorite showers by customising fireworks with fragments of meteorite bought from geological dealers for about pounds 300 each. “It’s a very pure gesture, a poetic idea really, putting back a falling star, but Nasa say I’d be adding to space debris. That’s pretty ridiculous since a meteorite is indigenous – it’s not like throwing a Coke can in he desert, more like dropping a grain of sand.”Although Parker has had a great deal of support from the Natural History Museum, which is ready to record her meteorite’s fate in its official log, other scientists have been swift to criticise. but when artists say they want to make art on their own terms the scientists turn round and say no, you’re a waste of time – space is too important for you.”The British artist Cornelia Parker got a taste of this truth earlier this month, when Nasa turned down her proposal to launch a meteorite back into space. After the Challenger shuttle disaster, space opportunities for civilians all but evaporated, but Roger Malina believes the climate could soon change “Most scientists are against having any humans in space.

It’s so expensive and frankly they’d rather have the money to build bigger telescopes But Kitsou’s research seems perfectly valid. She asks things a little bit differently and has helped clarify a number of questions.”"Artists have always helped scientists visualise their ideas,” says Arthur Woods, artist and chair of the International Academy of Astronautics Art & Literature Subcommittee, “Jules Verne, for example … They said astronauts don’t need to touch each other, therefore any such research was pointless.”Kitsou’s eyes are now set on winning a place for further research on the new International Space Station. “I was fascinated by how bodies interacted together in zero- g – the notion of feeling someone’s mass but not their weight,” explains Kitsou, “but this was vetoed.