15 years ago, fiberglass cows were created that artists could decorate.

Interviewee: Gregory Sholette

Sholette: Years ago Zurich Switzerland [see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CowParade ] decided to commission artists to decorate full-sized fiberglass cows and place them around city sidewalks. I guess the idea was to have tourists get excited about the city. Later on that same project also took place in Chicago and there has been variations of it since then in other US cities. But the point here being that this Microsoft project seems like the next step up from the fibreglass cows, where instead of a physical but temporary sculpture you have somebody doing an ephemeral yet ‘interesting’ performance piece. I think the young lady in the video even said that it’s “playful” and “fun.” (1:35 on the video)