Well, people call me a hacker and I do paint. I don't claim that I'm good, I'm just an amateur, but I am doing it! Take a glimpse of my work: http://imgur.com/a/6BdJS#TmmoJ
Yeah my bad, wasn't specific enough - I meant painters, sculpters and the like.
In my head they are called "art", I have to make an active decision to think of "art" as "the arts" including other things - guess just the way I learned the vocab. as a kid. So it was already a step to edit from "art" to "visual art".
Perhaps I should have gone with "static visual art that is created for the sake of being art"?
As to your examples, I suspect the main reason that there's such a link is (obviously) the big crossover. If you're an artist who wants to make money making websites, or videos, or whatever, it makes sense to learn at least some of the technology related to it to help you. And if you're, say, a website developer, it sometimes makes sense to go the other way too.
I don't believe there's a difference. All the good graphic designers I know don't only do applied design for clients, they also create "static visual art that is created for the sake of being art". On the other hand, most sculptors I know mostly create statues for banks and local governments.
Having attended art school, I can tell you there is little art free from commerce and it mostly is no good. Having some constraints actually helps the quality of the work.
Once again I think my wording rather than my point is the problem - by "created for the sake of being art" I didn't mean in terms of whether there was monetary gain for the artist, I meant how it is to be used.
You create a website, your aim isn't generally to have people stand around and admire the art, that's a side effect. (And sure, sometimes maybe it's the strongest influence when a designer is making a website, but it isn't meant to be - it's meant to be a part of making something functional).
Not to make this into a long debate, but I don't think your wording is the problem.
Plenty of websites have no commercial goal, they're just meant to be gawked at. All the major contemporary art museums have websites, photos and posters in their collections.
Also, many sculptures found in museums weren't made to be used as art - they were meant as tools or status symbols, for communication, sexual arousal or worship.
To be a 'real' artist isn't determined by the medium one uses, but by the quality of the work created. I enjoy the work of Dieter Rams, Saul Bass and Dick Bruna just as much as that of Vincent van Gogh and Jackson Pollock.
I certainly didn't mean to imply that some art is not "real art", if anything I have a lot more respect for video editors, web designers, marketing designers than I do for most modern painters (from a very subjective quality of work point of view).
All I was trying to do was find a decent way to seperate art that isn't related to anything technical, of the type that (loosely speaking) has been being produced for centuries(/more), and stuff like video, web etc.
As to not thinking my wording is the problem - your replies have showed that the impression I gave you wasn't at all what my thoughts were, so clearly that was the problem.
I've never met anyone who bridged visual art with anything tech-related, but composers, singers, pianists, orchestra members... hell yes.
Is it just that painters are less common that musicians and that ratio stays true in the tech world?