It doesn't

You still haven't explained (as far as I can tell) why consciousness matters here? If art is consciousness and self-organization, then what? Isn't everything? Taking a shit is consciousness and self-organization and so is Rembrandt's The Night Watch - reconcile the two for us? How does this possibly assist us in gaining any clarity about art — Tom Storm

To answer your question: it doesn't. It merely translates art into a (alleged or proposed) universal language of self-organisation, consciousnesses (which are just people) and their "interaction".

It's not that we form mental images of objects and that we don't have access to the objects themselves. That's a kind of logical empiricism that would make my loved ones very unreal indeed. The situation can be compared with that of math in physics. The "shut up and calculate" attitude says that we will never know the objects an Sich. But the math is merely descriptive. It describes some objective properties. Math is merely a mental construction that we project upon the physical universe. The formalist approach is untennable. The intuitive approach bears fruit.

As I study information in the sense that it informs ( shapes ) its potential power is growing in my mind. — Pop

Information in the sense that it informs? What's the driving force of the sellf organizing structures? How do the patterns on insects or tigers, or giraffes come about? What makes them different? How do the wings of a butterfly and the figures on it come about? Is it a coincidence that some patterns have skull shapes? How does the body of the chameleon change color?