Artistic Stereotypes and Public Perception

Question
NM(new media) art is usually made by teams of people, has NM finally destroyed the myth of the artist or has the myth just been changed to accommodate computer programmers and designers?

After a good bit of thought on this, I find myself jumping back and forth between the fence on this question. In relation to whether the artistic label could/ should be extended to designers and programmers, I think yes and no. I still see programmers as tool designers that aim to help the efficiency of regular life and of course the artist. That is not to say that programming lack creativity, but it is far too focused on the functional. Designers are closer to artists because both the functional and the aesthetic is key. Programming is a little too focused on function, at the point that you call in a designer to adjust a GUI to be aethetically pleasing is when the artistry is happening. The programmer's contributions are about efficiency and making tools better.

Now about the stereotype of the artist. If we consider artist as in the typical professional sense I would say that perhaps new media did shift some public perception of it. However, I think the stereotype lives on today, especially in education. Consider the way Virginia Tech's Art program is structured. Creative technologies is still embedded with Studio Arts. This may be a bit more of a technical issue (making a new major is really difficult.) Yet, when I tell people that I went for a Studio Arts degree, the immediate response is that I just wasted A LOT of money. The perception of the uselessness of an art degree is still an existing stereotype, unless you specify some technical field associated with it. This implies that the technical field (whatever it could be from animation to graphic design) is still separate from art in the public mind. Ultimatly after a few seconds of thought, most people would come to the conclusion that all of these jobs are art related and create art in it's own right. However the association still exist that commercial new media art is too functional (entertainment, advertising, etc.) to be immediately thought of as art.

The exception would be perhaps new media art used in non commercial means. In the traditional sense of putting up mixed media art projects in galleries to be sold for large sums of money. In Exit Through the Gift Shop most people didn't associate graffiti as a real art form (despite it's traditional nature) until Banksy and Mr. Brainwash put up their graffiti projects in a gallery opening and sold his pieces for tons of money. The mentioned in the documentary that art is viewed as such because an artistic elite chooses what is art versus the common people.