Our thesis deals with the domain of the digital art from the point of view of the "reception", that is in the space where the meeting between the work and the public takes place. More exactly, we conceive the activity of the public as an interaction with the digital work, so we try to understand how the public co-build the sense together with the work. Our investigations come from two types of ground. In the first one, we meet public-visitors of exhibitions and in the latter of the public-Internet users of net art sites. We consider the digital installation and the net art work as possibles which reveal themselves in the interaction with the public. We implement a qualitative methodology, completely anchored in the comprehensive approach of human phenomena, to analyze the interactions of the public with the works. After a collection of ethnographical type data, we apply two methods of analysis: situational semiotics, by Alex Mucchielli, and the grounded theory by Pierre Paillé. The present research then allows to make intelligible the way publics participate in the device of the work. This understanding in situation of "reception" inevitably gives axes to rethink the ways to make in situation of "conception", the interactions of the public with the work participating in feedback loops of in the creations of the artists and in their mediatization
