in music: guido d’arezzo: guidos method (11th century), a method to generate a melody from a text athanasius kircher: arca musirithmica (1660) dietrich nikolaus winkel: componium (1821) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Componium or some musical card games: kaleidacousticon system (1822) quadrille melodist (1865)
in literature: Georg Philipp Harsdörffer: “Fünffacher Denckring der Teutschen Sprache” (1651) a permutative scheme for generating poetry the methods of the Oulipo. harry matthews “oulipo compendium” is quite a good resource for that. for example: george perec: la vie mode d’emploi or: Raymond Queneau – Un conte à votre façon
Philip Galanter has written about pre-computer generative art strategies: http://www.philipgalanter.com/academia/index.html Also you might also find something useful in Holtzman’s book “Digital Mantras”.
“Logical Conclusions: 40 Years of Rule Based Art”, it’s an excellent catalogue of pre-computational and non-computational strategies. There are some copies for sale on AbeBooks. if you include random to generative there are a lot of works from the dadaists: hans (jean) arp, marcel duchamp, man ray (Le retour à la raison), etc. here you find a list of artists who used mathematic to create art works: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konkrete_Kunst pre twelve-tone music composer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Matthias_Hauer