If you were passing through Yonge-Dundas Square in Toronto yesterday morning, you’d have seen coffee being put to an entirely unusual Monday-morning use.

In the heart of downtown Toronto, a team of artists hired by McDonald’s were busy putting together an art installation to celebrate the first day of McDonald’s free ‘It’s causing quite a stir’ coffee promotion starting this week. By 8 a.m., when MiC passed through, there were just two unusual-looking domes constructed out of coffee cups in place, but by noon, the crew had constructed a street-level circular ‘mural’ made entirely out of coffee-filled cups. To create a visual pattern, each cup was filled with varying levels of coffee to achieve the desired effect.

‘McDonald’s wanted to do something that would bring the sentiment of the campaign to life in a disruptive way,’ said Karen Gold, director of marketing, McDonald’s Canada, told MiC late yesterday. ‘We came up with the idea of doing an art installation made out of our coffee in one of Toronto’s busiest public spaces.’

The entire process was filmed using stop-motion photography, and an edited clip was created and uploaded to YouTube today.