Mediated ecology in Fukushima: decentralized storytelling and collaborative telepresent experience beyond the post-disaster landscape

Introduction In contemporary societies, human connection with nature is increasingly diminished, weakening ecological literacy and contributing to social indifference. Although technological mediation explored innovative mediators for experiencing nature, many existing systems prioritize human perception and perform human-centralized stories. In the “Difficult-to-Return Zones” in Fukushima, Japan, extreme physical and social inaccessibility impose a vast psychological distance, causing the public to perceive this landscape through abstract high-level construal that fosters emotional detachment. Method To bridge this gap, this study designed a decentralized system “WildEcho”, with an IoT-based responsive installation to facilitate technology-mediated human-nature encounters in the post-disaster context, characterized by limited accessibility, uncertain live engagement, and decelerated experience. The system integrates environmental sensors, panoramic cameras, AI-assisted movement detection, and multisensory output devices to establish a continuous telepresent experience. Enabling both remote human participants and local wildlife to start nonverbal interaction, this system helps construct a co-shaped and decentralized narrative space, bridging spatial and temporal distances. Result The presented system in Fukushima maintained approximately 99.7% uptime across the 14-month deployment period, demonstrating its stability. The unpredictable wildlife-triggered events produced a non-linear and co-created ecological narrative shaped by human and non-human presence, absence, and attention rather than direct human manipulation. During the exhibition, qualitative data was collected through public engagement, interview, and contemporaneous field notes. Our analysis and reflection indicate that participant accounts suggest curiosity toward the site, recognition of the exclusion zone as a living ecosystem, anticipation for real-time interaction events, emotional connection, and ethical concern for non-human life. Discussion The findings suggest that minimally curated telepresence experience can support more concrete and situated ways of imagining inaccessible post-disaster ecologies. Distributing agency across humans, wildlife, environments, and technological infrastructure, WildEcho offers an alternative model for post-disaster ecological storytelling that encourages empathetic imagination and ethical reflection, reducing perceived psychological distance. This work contributes to discussions on posthumanist interaction design, decentralized engagement, and technologically mediated experience toward inaccessible ecology.