Anything can be art, especially if it's not useful as anything else. While some people cling to their own personal definitions of the term, usually what they're including is good art or even great art; nothing else qualifies in their minds. Leaving aside the question of quality, it's hard to claim that something an artist makes and decides to call "art" is actually something else - there's no generally-accepted term for an attempt at art that's fallen short.

3D printing can be a means for producing art as well as other things. The three examples in the accompanying article: https://3dprint.com/135484/define-3d-printed-art/ are actually pretty good sculptures in my opinion. The most exciting kind of art, for me, anyway, is the kind that breaks new ground, which manages to find things to explore that haven't been worked to death already, and 3D printing facilitates that by allowing an artist to dispense with the technical processes of creating physical structures by hand, and directly translate a virtual model into a tangible one.

It has been objected that this is "too easy" to be true art. But art is not, as some conceive it to be, like an athletic contest where everyone is trying to accomplish the same thing under a set of rules that can't be broken on pain of disqualification. There's no minimum quota for the effort that must be put in, or the amount of time an artist must spend on a piece. Making art is a process of bringing things out of an artist's brain and into the world; the way that's done is up to the artist. Like it or not, however it's made, it's art.

Andrew Werby
Juxtamorph.com