BLAST, World War I, and Tonal Shifts

Our exploration of the tone of the two issues of ''BLAST'' made us realize the strong impact the war had on the magazine. Our text mining on voyant tools indicates a change in 'war' being very infrequent in the 1914 issue of ''BLAST'' to being the most frequent in the 1915 issue. We sensed that the tone in the earlier version of the magazine was more humanist and individualistic, echoing the merits of the Vorticism art movement. Comparatively, the second issue's tone gained a more political stance. No doubt the on set of WWI is the cause of such a shift in the tone. The second issue is also much more defensive in that it often times references the WWI as a war on art. The second issue also lost some of the satire found in the beginning of the first issue with its comical blasts of different countries followed by praise. Overall, the onset of WWI drastically changed the tone between the two issues.